Exploding popular myth that cardiovascular disease is strictly an urban rich phenomenon, a Government, Non Government Organization (NGO), University 3 year study said that 32% of deaths in rural India was due to heart disease. The Center for Chronic Disease Control, the CARE Foundation, Byrraju Foundation, George Institute for International Health, and University of Queensland in Australia participated in this study of 180,000 people in 45 villages of Andhra Pradesh (AP).

Contrary to popular notions of rural health, communicable diseases such as malaria, polio, and childhood infections were responsible for relatively fewer deaths than heart failure. They study categorically said, “cardiovascular diseases are responsible for an unexpectedly large population of all deaths.”