The American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin (AAPI) and the American Heart Association recently entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Gujarat government to provide an advance cardiac care support to the patients within the state. Through this initiative they plan to create an awareness programme by training the doctors and healthcare professionals in identifying the symptoms of cardiac problems in time.

It is understood that the association plans to extract the expertise on this subject from the experts in this field from both the associations and disseminate it among the local administrators and health care providers for their benefits. While the key focus will be on outsourcing knowledge as per the requirements to tackle the complications based on the local needs and requirements, hands on training will also be given to doctors to handle urgent situation to avoid complications.

Experts inform that the decision to focus on cardiac care, stems from the fact that India has the highest incidence of diabetes in the world, one of the main culprit responsible for heart attack and stroke among patients worldwide. Jayesh Shah, president, AAPI, states, “Timely intervention along with proper medical care is the key to effective management of cardiac complications. However this is where we fall short in our expertise, costing the health of the patients at large. Our programme is specifically aimed at developing a workforce trained to fill in this lacunae through collaboration with the NGOs and healthcare providers in the state to train people on effective cardiac management.”

This MoU was signed between the associations and the state government during the 8th annual conference, Global Health Summit 2014 that was recently concluded in Ahmedabad  Apart from signing this MoU, the AAPI also extended its agreement with the state government to continue their work on improving and and transforming the healthcare delivery in state. Through this initiative they plan to share best practices and experiences from leading experts in the world and develop actionable plans for launching pilot projects to enable access to affordable and quality health care for all people.

Interestingly, after having conducted successful pilot models in the state of Gujarat, the association is soon planning to emulate the same model as per the specific requirement in the state of Maharashtra as well. It is understood that, the association is in dialogue with the Maharashtra government to arrive at a consensus to identify three to four key area for collaboration on developing and rolling out implementation plans for selected initiatives like skills training, education, screening diagnostics, etc. The results of the pilot projects which are to be launched in the state are to be released in the 9th annual conference, Global Health Summit 2015 to be organised in Mumbai next year.