One in five heart attack patients in Kashmir is now under forty-five. The Valley must act before it loses a generation in its prime.
The patients arriving in the cardiac wards of SMHS and SKIMS are getting younger. Cardiologists say one in every five heart attack cases in Kashmir now involves someone under forty-five. Men in their thirties, and sometimes in their twenties, are collapsing at work, on cricket grounds and on the way home. A disease once linked with old age is now striking people at the peak of their working and family lives.
This is part of a wider surge. Heart disease causes nearly 30 per cent of all deaths in the Valley. Heart attack cases have almost doubled in five years, and stent procedures have doubled in just two. Hospitals that once treated four or five cardiac patients a day in summer now see ten to fifteen, and winter pushes the number to twenty or thirty. In 2023, circulatory diseases accounted for more than eight thousand certified deaths in Jammu and Kashmir.
The young are paying first because the changes in how Kashmir lives have hit them hardest. Their parents walked, farmed and worked with their hands. They sit at desks, behind steering wheels and in front of screens. Fast food, fried snacks and sugary drinks have replaced home meals. Smoking often starts in school, and substance abuse has spread among youth. Unemployment and decades of uncertainty add a burden of stress that few speak about. Long winters keep them indoors for months.
The danger is made worse by a false sense of safety. A thirty-year-old rarely checks blood pressure or blood sugar, so hypertension and diabetes go unnoticed for years. When chest pain comes, it is brushed off as gas or tiredness. Time is lost, and patients reach hospital after the golden hour, when treatment could have saved the most heart muscle.
This trend can be reversed. Screening for blood pressure, sugar and cholesterol should begin in the twenties, through colleges, workplaces and primary health centres. Schools and universities must make physical activity a daily requirement, not an optional period. Anti-smoking and de-addiction programmes need to reach teenagers directly. District hospitals need clot-dissolving drugs and ambulances that reach villages quickly, and the virtual cardiac network linking peripheral doctors with specialists in Srinagar should be expanded. Awareness campaigns in Kashmiri must teach young people that chest pain at thirty is an emergency, not an inconvenience.
Families have a role as well. Cook with less salt and oil, keep cigarettes out of the house, and push sons and daughters towards a yearly check-up.
A society that loses its young to preventable illness loses its future twice. Kashmir cannot allow a generation in its prime to fill its cardiac wards.
