Covid 19 and its long-term effects on the heart.

Heart disease was the leading cause of death for both men and women in Mexico in the last cut made by INEGI, that is, the Statistics on Registered Deaths between January and June 2022 published this January 24, 2023.

On its own this is bad news -because these are diseases that have many stages of prevention- but in conjunction with other data that INEGI warns is terrible news: heart diseases registered an excess mortality of between 30.59% and 41.24%.

According to the models - one recommended by the Pan American Health Organization and another called quasi-Poisson, which is based on cross-referenced data - from January 2020 to mid-2022 there should have been between 386,153 and 417,653 deaths, but instead there were 545,403.

This type of disease has been a problem for the Mexican population since youth: it is the third leading cause of death for people between 25 and 34 years of age and its danger increases as we get older. It is the second cause of death for Mexicans between 35 and 44 years of age and oscillates between the first and second from the age of 45 and throughout the decades of the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, and so on.

We had already detected that we should prevent and correct our sedentary lifestyle, smoking and poor diet -which leads to high cholesterol or diabetes- but since the onset of the pandemic something else has happened, as indicated by the figures: the rate of deaths from heart disease per 10,000 inhabitants had remained at around 10% since 2013 and in 2020 it jumped to 17%. The figure remained the same in 2021. Is Covid a trigger for cardiovascular ailments as well? Specialist people say yes.

"You have to look at this information with some reservation because a lot of what happens after you get Covid could be reflected in causes of death other than Covid that are not even directly linked. Increases in cerebrovascular problems, hypertension, heart attacks and diabetes have been seen after having covid and liver disease. It would be nice to start having a national research diagnostic assistance plan to look at this," he told me in a interview Dr. Mauricio Rodriguez, UNAM spokesperson for Covid issues, told me in an interview.

It is an individual matter, because no one wants to die from something that could have been avoided, but it is also a collective matter: our health system cannot cope with any more burden.

In addition to the research pointed out by Dr. Rodriguez and the transformations that have been emphasized by organizations such as Mexico EvalúaMexico is one of the OECD countries that spends the least on health, allocating only 2.8% of GDP when 6.6% is the average proportion of the countries that make up this international organization", parallel policies and the closing of ranks around them are needed.

For example, just a couple of weeks ago stricter tobacco control measures were announced and yesterday the World Health Organization highlighted our country's plans to achieve the proposed goal of eradicating trans fats by 2023.

Every personal and governmental decision counts and hearts in Mexico have no more time to waste.

The opinions expressed are the responsibility of the authors and are absolutely independent of the position and editorial line of Opinion 51.