* Text Courtesy IANS

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 (IANS) The urban-rural divide in India is quickly disappearing as far as cardiac diseases are concerned, with many village residents acquiring risk factors for heart disease such as high cholesterol and diabetes, doctors said Saturday.

"Blood pressure and other risk factors of cardiac disease is now high among people in rural areas. We need to create awareness in rural areas," Santanu Guha, general secretary, Cardiac Society of India (CSI), said on the sidelines of the 64th Annual CSI Conference and SAARC Cardiac Congress.

He also said CSI is coming out with booklets in regional languages on heart disease to educate them.

According to CSI, recent studies have shown that heart diseases have emerged as the number one killer in both urban and rural areas of the country.

"The diseases affect men and women alike. If all age groups are included, heart diseases account for about 19 percent of all deaths in the country," said a surgeon at the conference.

The four-day conference in Delhi, with almost 3,000 cardiac surgeons across the country in attendance, focused on "Cardiology in India-Prevention & Intervention". It ended Saturday.