Lucknow: During the NIC-2026 conference of the Cardiological Society of India (CSI), Dr Sharad Chandra shared a personal experience to demonstrate how medical facilities had finally reached rural areas in UP, a marked difference over the past 20-odd years.Dr Chandra spoke about an episode in 2005, when one December night around 10pm, he received a call from his father who was in Chandausi, saying that he was experiencing chest pain and asking what he should do.“I immediately asked him to get an ECG done somewhere nearby but my father said that it was late at night and an ECG would not be available at that time. He would get it done in the morning. That night, my father and I both stayed awake. The next day, the ECG came out normal, but that night left a question in my mind – do we really have arrangements for timely treatment?” Dr Chandra said.He said that two decades later, UP had changed completely. He said that now a patient who suffers a heart attack does not have to wait until morning and initiatives like ‘Hriday Setu’ have connected major institutions such as SGPGI, KGMU and Dr Ram Manohar Lohia Institute of Medical Sciences with district hospitals.“Earlier, treatments such as angioplasty were limited to big cities, but now these facilities are available in districts like Sultanpur, Jaunpur, Bahraich, Gonda and Basti. Patients no longer have to fight not just distance but also time,” he said.Dr Chandra said that the change in healthcare was not limited to numbers but there was also a change in trust. “There was a time when even an ECG was not possible at night, but now, this is the changed Uttar Pradesh. This is the Uttam Pradesh,” he said.
