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Inadequate ECG (electrocardiography) facilities and delayed diagnosis is leading to deaths in a majority of heart attack cases in rural areas.
Padmanabha Kamath, interventional cardiologist and professor and head of the Cardiology Department at Kasturba Medical College in Mangaluru, decided to do something about it when he saw a young patient from a village losing his life to massive heart attack due to delayed diagnosis in 2014.
WhatsApp groups
Kamath started collecting data on villages, nearby towns, hospitals and PHCs (primary health centres), and the difficulties peculiar to the geographic locations in coastal Karnataka and neighbouring districts.
In February 2018, he formed ‘Cardiology At Doorstep’ (CAD), a WhatsApp group with 150 members, to install ECG machines in PHCs and private clinics in rural areas to help identify heart-related problems and provide assistance over WhatsApp.
He told BusinessLine that the CAD initiative has distributed and installed 105 ECG machines in PHCs and private clinics, covering around 15 lakh people in rural areas of eight districts in Karnataka (coastal and Malnad regions) since February.
How it works
Doctors at these PHCs and private clinics record ECG and transmit it on the WhatsApp group. Now he has two WhatsApp groups — one with 256 members and another with 210 members — for this purpose. Of them, 50 are from AYUSH stream in rural areas.
Kamath and Manish Rai, another cardiologist from Mangaluru, provide opinion on the ECGs posted on these groups.
“When an ECG is posted by these grassroot-level doctors, we respond immediately. We alert them in cases of emergencies,” he said, adding that they have also been taught first-aid to handle situations related to heart attacks.
More than 3,500 ECGs have been reported in the two WhatsApp groups since February, and more than 980 cases of heart ailments were detected on this platform.
Stressing the need for ECG network in rural areas, Kamath said 80 per cent of the heart patients can be saved if first aid is given on time. On the lack of first aid in rural areas, he said the lack of proper diagnosis due to shortage of ECG facility in rural areas is the reason in many cases, he said.
His initiative to install ECGs in rural areas is getting financial support from corporates, he said, adding that even some of the patients have donated ECGs. Recently, he treated a 70-year-old woman from Sullia taluk. Now she has donated money from her pension for an ECG machine. CAD has decided to install that machine at her village, he said.
Kamath said CAD hopes to install a total of 250 ECG machines by 2020 in Karnataka and the neighbouring districts in Kerala, covering around 50 lakh people. He is also planning to replicate this model under the name ‘Project Punarjeevan’ in other States and is in talks with like-minded cardiologists.
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