FEATURE
Heart Failure
(Global Hearts’ Day)
Prof. B. M. Hegde,
hegdebm@gmail.com
“If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.”
Old proverb.
The world seems to be suffering from heart failure in our medical jargon. Heart failure is not stopping of the heart but only a defective functioning of the heart. When one contemplates on the world affairs today one quickly realises that all players in this world have become heartless. Heartless politicians, heartless businessmen, heartless media, heartless doctors, heartless judiciary, heartless lawyers, scientists, technologists, bureaucrats, administrators, educators and, even, heartless ritualistic religions and NGOs abound all around us. While we have people who love trees and animals we hardly have people who selflessly love humanity. No one wants to look at any problem in its entirety. While we talk of terrorism and war we never think as to who created terrorism in the first place and also that wars are born in the minds of heartless men. Our biggest problem seems to be man’s cruelty to man in the name of religion, race, caste, creed, nation, colour, and what have you. With man’s proclivity for comfort and greed all the God given resources of this world are being systematically destroyed heartlessly.
Let us start a movement to awaken the younger generation, who are non converts, to realize their responsibility to others in society and learn to live while letting others live as well. Let the younger generation be taught to inject heart into every one of their actions keeping in mind that the highest goal in life is humanism. Humanism is a concept that gives the pride of place to mankind in all endeavours. Sharing and caring should be our twin goals as long as we live. In fact, there is a new positive definition of health, not the usual negative definitions of absence of disease etc. “Enthusiasm to work and enthusiasm to be compassionate in this hostile world is health.” With this definition one can be healthy as long as he/she lives.
With this in view we would want to start a movement on the Valentine’s Day, February 14th, for reasons more than one. Most young people all over the world already celebrate this day to send their heart with an arrow to their sweet hearts. We would only want them to extend this gesture to the whole of humanity most sincerely. In this case the heart, which is globally round in most pictures, will have a man sitting of the top trying to give a hand to another at the bottom falling off the cliff! Man helping man signal. Let us remind our younger generation that there is enough for man’s need in this world but not for man’s greed. Where one can sleep four can sit. Where one can sit two can stand. Some of our corporate honcho’s houses can accommodate thousand people easily.
840 million in this world do not get more than one meal a day. 67 million Indian children suffer from malnutrition and die at the rate of 6000 per day due to Nutritional Immune Deficiency Syndrome (NIDS). One example of heartless science and politics is here. Whereas 33 millions AIDS sufferers get $ 8 billion in research grant from NIH in the US alone, 67 million in India (an equal number elsewhere) of NIDS are not even known to majority of medical doctors. Reason is not far to seek. Anyone worth his salt calls himself an AIDS researcher as there is big money for grant. No body researches poverty and its ravages on human health because drug companies do not fund such research to break their own rice bowl! In fact, poverty is the mother of all illnesses, as it saps the most important human guard against any disease-the immune system.
One million people in the Indian State of Karnataka alone belong to no body. They do not even have a caste certificate to be included in the much publicized BPL (below poverty line) list. They live a gypsy life begging around using their skills in road side tricks of walking on the rope etc, or going from house to house with a bull begging, going round as fortune forecasters or as snake charmers. They do not have proper food and clothing and education is alien to them. How do we claim ourselves to be civilized when we close our eyes to all these atrocities with an ostrich like attitude in life? When you CAN voice your concern about the wrong doings in society, if you do not, you are as much a criminal as a terrorist is. While the world has shrunk to a small neighborhood mankind is yet to broaden its vision to make it into a large brotherhood!
Arise, awake and, sleep not, YOUNG INDIA, until this goal is achieved. Technology alone will not make India great. Science does not make it great, either. Politicians, bureaucrats, business tycoons, and powers that be do not make India great. What WILL make India, nay this whole world, great is only humanism and to that end let us start the World Hearts’ Day. It is not enough to just have a day in a year where we talk and then do not walk our talk in life. Every day must be a hearts’ day in every individual’s life in whatever walk of life he/she is in.
“Like the daisy, with the shadow that it casts, protecting the lingering dew drops from the sun,” mankind must blossom every morning to protect the less fortunate in society. Future generations should strive to be world citizens, men and women beyond borders. Noblesse oblige-haves have an obligation to society to look after the have-nots. That will cure this world of its serious heart failure. Most of us might need a real heart transplant to achieve that cure although, the majority will make do with a small dose of medical advice. Have a heart!
“Have the courage to act instead of react.”
Earlene Larson Jenks.
The above idea was strengthened in me after I received a note from an unknown Canadian friend, Dr. Vivian Rambihar, who wrote the following note after he read my comments in the British Medical Journal recently entitled Noblesse Oblige.
(Thank you very much and I could not agree more with inclusive education.
I know of some of your ideas and some of the work you have done over the decades and while it may not have had the impact you wished, it is not without impact and is inspirational. Your ideas and actions have changed the world, but there is so much to do and maybe there is a serious limit to what can be achieved.
The important thing here is that you think heart in your actions. Just came from a lecture on “Who in the world cares?” And you do and continue to seek change. So we just try and see if we can get more people to care more, and hopefully we would do some good. And perhaps the ideas in chaos and complexity can be harnessed to achieve more.
We can also dare to suggest that much of world problems like poverty, etc is a failure of heart, lack of caring and consideration for others. If more people think heart, we would find the food to feed the people who are starving and ill and in need of medications and education, etc. The Noblesse Oblige BMJ post was short but very touching. Reading that led me to think and also rethink what we do and can do and led me to the idea that the world has a failure of heart. It’s heart failure we have to treat, tapping into a cardiology vocabulary. And that’s not easy, so we keep trying, experimenting with new ways that hopefully may achieve more. And if we can find the heart, we can find the way.
If all we achieve is get people to think, or better yet rethink the world in the ways you describe, we would have achieved something.)
(Global Hearts’ Day)
Prof. B. M. Hegde,
hegdebm@gmail.com
“If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.”
Old proverb.
The world seems to be suffering from heart failure in our medical jargon. Heart failure is not stopping of the heart but only a defective functioning of the heart. When one contemplates on the world affairs today one quickly realises that all players in this world have become heartless. Heartless politicians, heartless businessmen, heartless media, heartless doctors, heartless judiciary, heartless lawyers, scientists, technologists, bureaucrats, administrators, educators and, even, heartless ritualistic religions and NGOs abound all around us. While we have people who love trees and animals we hardly have people who selflessly love humanity. No one wants to look at any problem in its entirety. While we talk of terrorism and war we never think as to who created terrorism in the first place and also that wars are born in the minds of heartless men. Our biggest problem seems to be man’s cruelty to man in the name of religion, race, caste, creed, nation, colour, and what have you. With man’s proclivity for comfort and greed all the God given resources of this world are being systematically destroyed heartlessly.
Let us start a movement to awaken the younger generation, who are non converts, to realize their responsibility to others in society and learn to live while letting others live as well. Let the younger generation be taught to inject heart into every one of their actions keeping in mind that the highest goal in life is humanism. Humanism is a concept that gives the pride of place to mankind in all endeavours. Sharing and caring should be our twin goals as long as we live. In fact, there is a new positive definition of health, not the usual negative definitions of absence of disease etc. “Enthusiasm to work and enthusiasm to be compassionate in this hostile world is health.” With this definition one can be healthy as long as he/she lives.
With this in view we would want to start a movement on the Valentine’s Day, February 14th, for reasons more than one. Most young people all over the world already celebrate this day to send their heart with an arrow to their sweet hearts. We would only want them to extend this gesture to the whole of humanity most sincerely. In this case the heart, which is globally round in most pictures, will have a man sitting of the top trying to give a hand to another at the bottom falling off the cliff! Man helping man signal. Let us remind our younger generation that there is enough for man’s need in this world but not for man’s greed. Where one can sleep four can sit. Where one can sit two can stand. Some of our corporate honcho’s houses can accommodate thousand people easily.
840 million in this world do not get more than one meal a day. 67 million Indian children suffer from malnutrition and die at the rate of 6000 per day due to Nutritional Immune Deficiency Syndrome (NIDS). One example of heartless science and politics is here. Whereas 33 millions AIDS sufferers get $ 8 billion in research grant from NIH in the US alone, 67 million in India (an equal number elsewhere) of NIDS are not even known to majority of medical doctors. Reason is not far to seek. Anyone worth his salt calls himself an AIDS researcher as there is big money for grant. No body researches poverty and its ravages on human health because drug companies do not fund such research to break their own rice bowl! In fact, poverty is the mother of all illnesses, as it saps the most important human guard against any disease-the immune system.
One million people in the Indian State of Karnataka alone belong to no body. They do not even have a caste certificate to be included in the much publicized BPL (below poverty line) list. They live a gypsy life begging around using their skills in road side tricks of walking on the rope etc, or going from house to house with a bull begging, going round as fortune forecasters or as snake charmers. They do not have proper food and clothing and education is alien to them. How do we claim ourselves to be civilized when we close our eyes to all these atrocities with an ostrich like attitude in life? When you CAN voice your concern about the wrong doings in society, if you do not, you are as much a criminal as a terrorist is. While the world has shrunk to a small neighborhood mankind is yet to broaden its vision to make it into a large brotherhood!
Arise, awake and, sleep not, YOUNG INDIA, until this goal is achieved. Technology alone will not make India great. Science does not make it great, either. Politicians, bureaucrats, business tycoons, and powers that be do not make India great. What WILL make India, nay this whole world, great is only humanism and to that end let us start the World Hearts’ Day. It is not enough to just have a day in a year where we talk and then do not walk our talk in life. Every day must be a hearts’ day in every individual’s life in whatever walk of life he/she is in.
“Like the daisy, with the shadow that it casts, protecting the lingering dew drops from the sun,” mankind must blossom every morning to protect the less fortunate in society. Future generations should strive to be world citizens, men and women beyond borders. Noblesse oblige-haves have an obligation to society to look after the have-nots. That will cure this world of its serious heart failure. Most of us might need a real heart transplant to achieve that cure although, the majority will make do with a small dose of medical advice. Have a heart!
“Have the courage to act instead of react.”
Earlene Larson Jenks.
The above idea was strengthened in me after I received a note from an unknown Canadian friend, Dr. Vivian Rambihar, who wrote the following note after he read my comments in the British Medical Journal recently entitled Noblesse Oblige.
(Thank you very much and I could not agree more with inclusive education.
I know of some of your ideas and some of the work you have done over the decades and while it may not have had the impact you wished, it is not without impact and is inspirational. Your ideas and actions have changed the world, but there is so much to do and maybe there is a serious limit to what can be achieved.
The important thing here is that you think heart in your actions. Just came from a lecture on “Who in the world cares?” And you do and continue to seek change. So we just try and see if we can get more people to care more, and hopefully we would do some good. And perhaps the ideas in chaos and complexity can be harnessed to achieve more.
We can also dare to suggest that much of world problems like poverty, etc is a failure of heart, lack of caring and consideration for others. If more people think heart, we would find the food to feed the people who are starving and ill and in need of medications and education, etc. The Noblesse Oblige BMJ post was short but very touching. Reading that led me to think and also rethink what we do and can do and led me to the idea that the world has a failure of heart. It’s heart failure we have to treat, tapping into a cardiology vocabulary. And that’s not easy, so we keep trying, experimenting with new ways that hopefully may achieve more. And if we can find the heart, we can find the way.
If all we achieve is get people to think, or better yet rethink the world in the ways you describe, we would have achieved something.)
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