New Delhi, Jul 15 : Years-long training and lack of financial returns have led to severe shortage of cardiac surgeons in India, a country where every fourth person dies of a heart failure, Director of All India Heart Foundation Dr O P Yadava said today.
"Last year there was not a single candidate who registered for the Diplomate of National Board (DNB) programme in Cardiac Surgery in more than ten training programmes running in Delhi. Medical practitioners have lost their interest in this specialisation," Dr Yadava, Chief Consultant Cardiac Surgeon and CEO of National Heart Institute said.
This is a major cause of concern as it has been predicted that by 2015, almost 20 million people will die from CVDs, mainly from heart disease and stroke. Moreover, as more and more people are suffering from the obesity syndrome, they are twice as likely to suffer from heart attacks.
The reasons for this declining trend are attributable to the six to seven years of training involved to the strenuous nature of the job itself and the relatively greater financial returns even from streams as mundane as radiology and laboratory services.
"Another reason in equal measure is the high headed egoists senior faculty in the speciality who think themselves as nothing less than God and demand and extract more than what an average trainee could endure," Dr Yadava, winner of Rajiv Gandhi Excellence Award-1992 as well as Indira Gandhi Excellence Award-2006, added.
Asked if, according to him, government is thinking of taking action against the crisis, the reply came in negative. "The government is happy to have its four seats of Master of Chirurgical (MCH) filled in its top-most institute. They forget that the number of applicants for it has declined drastically from thousands to hundreds and will go down further," the doctor said.
He informed about a desperate measure taken this year by the authorities to attract trainees for cardiac surgery wherein a new programme was launched where entry is being provided immediately after MBBS for a five-year consolidated DNB programme in CTVS.
"This is not enough. It is necessary to increase the financial compensation, reduction of working hours which currently go to 18 hours a day, ensuring the cardiologist's self esteem, adequate placement and a lifestyle improvement programme by the government," he said.
India suffers the highest loss in potentially productive years of life, due to deaths from cardiovascular disease in people aged 35-64 years (9·2 million years lost in 2000). By 2030, this loss is expected to rise to 17.9 million years -- 940 per cent greater than the corresponding loss in the US, which has a population a third the size of India's.
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