50 years of Independence have seen tremendous advances in the quality of healthcare in India. But we can truly be free only when all preventable and treatable diseases can be eliminated from our country. Dedicated involvement towards providing the finest standards of care should be the primary aim. Newer ideas and appropriate technology should be freely available to all.
Heart disease is the leading cause of mortality worldwide.
It single handedly accounts for more number of deaths from any cause in the developed nations. In India the incidence of cardiac related problems have slowly and steadily increased over the last few decades. In our endeavour to provide an update on the fast developing field of cardiac medicine let me draw attention to our cover story on automatic implantable cardioverter defibrillators by Dr. Karnik Dattaraya. Once widely available this could prove to be of immense benefit to a number of patients. Pacemakers have been in use for some time and an interesting review has been done by Dr. Ajay M Naik and Dr. Yash Lokhandwala.