The ACC’s delegation to the Cardiological Society of India’s meeting earlier this month made big news in India — see the story at right, including a photo of Jagat Narula, M.D., F.A.C.C., Pratap Reddy, M.D., F.A.C.C., and me. Reddy owns many CV hospitals in India. Although the media there aren’t the best fact-checkers (I’m Dr. Levin, chief cardiologist from the American Heart Association in one article), they did a great job disseminating our basic message, which was that, while the recent terrorist killings of 170 people in Mumbai were truly tragic (and which have had non-stop 24-hour media coverage there for weeks), multiples of that number of Indians die needlessly each hour of every day of preventable CV disease. CV disease is already the number one killer in India, but it is increasing alarmingly with recent dietary and lifestyle changes.  India must do more to decrease their risk factors for CV disease.

The CSI (Indian Society of Cardiology) is very interested in working more with us in these regards in helping them develop PR capacities to better reach out to the public on prevention issues, and to include more on prevention in our joint education efforts.