Platter of peril

New Delhi, March 26: After years of debate, the health ministry may this year begin urging people to avoid samosas and kachoris and to exercise regularly as it kick-starts its first programme to prevent diabetes, heart disease and stroke.

The national programme to prevent these non-communicable diseases — which share lifestyle-related risk factors — will be introduced in six districts later this year with a Rs 17.58 crore funding, a health official said.

The funds will be used to deliver tips about healthy lifestyle to communities through schools, residential areas, and workplaces, add medical facilities in district hospitals in those communities, and train medical staff, he said.

The ministry has not identified the six districts yet, the official said, but the plan is to handpick one each from east, north, west, south, central and northeast India.

Doctors, who have long been concerned that the government is not moving fast enough to address India’s growing epidemic of these non-communicable diseases, said a programme confined to six districts would be a “good start”.

“Public health programmes have so far focused on maternal care, immunisation, infectious diseases. We have no surveillance mechanism for non-communicable diseases, nor is there any infrastructure for continuous care of patients with such non-communicable diseases in the public sector,” said Rajiv Gupta, a cardiologist in Jaipur who’s been studying trends in cardiac diseases.

Doctors estimate that India has over 30 million people with diabetes and some 60 million with high blood pressure — a risk factor for heart disease as well as stroke. Studies have revealed that unhealthy lifestyles are responsible for the relatively early heart attacks among Indians — typically five to eight years earlier than among Caucasian populations.

“It’s long been established that the prevalence of these diseases is going sky-high,” said Nikhil Tandon, a senior endocrinologist at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences. “We’ve been waiting for intervention.”

The new programme will involve delivering general as well as region-specific health messages — from the hazards of the use of tobacco to the virtues of consuming fresh fruits and vegetables.

“Many kitchen practices in India carry some level of risk,” said a health official. “In eastern India, fish is marinated in salt for long periods of time, and everywhere people re-use oil for frying.”

While details of how the programme will be run are yet to be worked out, the official said, non-government organisations, educational institutions, and medical colleges are likely to be involved.