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Healthcare: But do we even care?

By Dr. Kamiya Sargoch(B.D.S,M.B.A,Coffee enthusiast,Lives in Chicago, USA)

Tuesday June 13, 2017,

3 min Read

Why is Healthcare even a single world since we have essentially stopped caring. There should have been two words Health and Care used independently of each other with a one hand distance the way we were taught in school.

It is poignant to note that in the developing countries like our own the poor are thin and the rich are obese in fact in India a man’s obesity is a mark of a well fed person from a good to do family and while this certainly is not true for the entire country it holds true at large. And strangely enough in the developed world it is the poor who are obese and the rich who are thin for lack of a better word. While the poor of our nation survive on the bare minimum and are increasingly malnourished, the easy and cheap access to junk foods increases the health risk of the poor in the developed countries many of them living on government welfare. Does that mean blindly advocating for government welfare for our poorest of the poor will only lead to a different set of diseases and healthcare problems?

The other India in our glitzy Gurgaon and Mumbai offices are too busy meeting the next sales target that gulping down a few soft drinks from the office vending machine is no big deal, in fact that is taken as a benefit offered by the company. The daily stress to commute to and fro from the office is so much that a pack of cigarettes once you come home is actually a stress buster. The trendy and stress inducing lifestyle for our working professionals is causing obesity to rise at an alarming rate. Married working women juggling careers and expectations at home will soon constitute a separate demographic challenged by obesity and the associated risks like diabetes and cardiovascular diseases that come with it.

It is as if there are Two India’s running parallel in time.

For those of us in the health sector “Triple Burden” is a term commonly used by researchers. Countries like India are still grappling with malnutrition, common infections at the same time seeing a massive rise in non-communicable diseases like obesity, diabetes, heart diseases, stress increasingly affecting much younger populations and dealing with the threats of pandemics.

Can we target one of these burdens easily through creating awareness, content across digital media on issues like obesity and making the professional India move on their toes for their own Healthcare! I would love to have a whatsapp group run by my boss which says “FitSalesGroup” with the boss encouraging and motivating everyone to meet their health targets with their sales targets one step at a time. Can I make my 15 year old niece have a fitness snapchat story?

Maybe we can get everyone to care then or Healthcare is the next bubble that will burst?

For queries email to [email protected]. To reply to the questions posed in the article just comment below. To take part in the health care movement take action and encourage others around you.