• The youngest patients of cardiovascular diseases, the world over belong to South Asia with a median age as low as 53 years (Yusuf, Hawken et al; Lancet, 2004).
• A greater risk of death from coronary disease has been observed in men and women of south-Asian origin, by comparison with other ethnic groups.
• There is a rise in risk from rural to urban and from urban to migrant environments (Reddy, Shah; Lancet, 2005).
• Compared with all other countries, India suffers the highest loss in potentially productive years of life, due to deaths from cardiovascular disease in people aged 35-64 years (92 lakh years lost in 2000 as per the WHO National Plan of Action, 2006).
• Healthy years of life lost per 1,000 population, due to coronary heart disease are also quite high (in the range of 20-29 years) according to the World Health Organization in 2002.

China and India alone bear a greater burden of cardiovascular disease than all the industrialized countries as a whole. Some studies say that by 2010, 60% of the world’s heart disease burden is expected to occur in India.