Health for humanity

As health anxieties rise, K Srinath Reddy's book explores linkages between health and biology, geography, economic means, and social stature, offering useful insights

Pulse to Planet: The Long Lifeline of Human Health

Author: K Srinath Reddy

Publisher: Harper Collins

Pages: 264

Price: Rs 599

“Think of music from a piano. The keys of the piano are the same but the music that is made varies” depending on who plays it and how. Health is the music we make with our given (sometimes chosen) biological, social and economic circumstances. K Srinath Reddy, founder of Public Health Foundation of India and former president of World Heart Federation, expands on this variance in his second book on health and public policy Pulse to Planet: The Long Lifeline of Human Health.

Health — as an internal process, as an outcome, as a service, or as an industry — is a complex and intricate affair. Rather, health is the interaction between an individual body and its surroundings. In this book, Dr Reddy connects the dots between biology, geography, economic means, social stature, and the global politics that surround an individual and contribute directly or indirectly to his or her health. He places this interaction in a larger context and studies the role played by the genes a person is born with, the diet that is followed and living conditions. In short, “lifestyle” gets a whole new meaning in Dr Reddy’s judgement. He takes the responsibility of one’s health away from the individual and divides it between personal choice and State provisions such as access to and quality of medical care, and the affordability of healthcare services. Variants such as race, ethnicity, and (forced or voluntary) migration only add to the variations; leading the way for more, deeper, differences. The body, then, may bear the final brunt of this variance but health — physical or psychological — is not just a personal choice but a public matter.

In Pulse to Planet, Dr Reddy traces the origins of the present day commercial, industrial, capitalist and consumerist proclivities of the world but does not empathise with them. As the market of unhealthy products replaces (or rather, “displaces”) the market of healthy foods, in turn compromising not only the integrity of human health but also of the environment in which it exists and on which it depends, Dr Reddy explains that the choice of consuming harmful products such as alcohol, tobacco, or processed food is not on the person alone. He holds the food-industrial complex accountable for its flaws and offers alternatives such as minimising the promotion of unhealthy products, regulating profit-driven industries, adapting sustainable means of manufacturing, and doing away with the unethical, exploitative and environmentally harmful practices. Dr Reddy’s appeal is to young people, who are in a better position to make the right choices, the public and private sectors that have the strength to redirect these choices, and the policymakers who can modulate both. The looming humanitarian crisis of public health, he writes, can only be avoided by “bridging existing social inequities that translate into health inequities”.

Dr Reddy’s first book, Make Health in India (2019), concentrated on the Indian way of delivering a secure and equal health service to all. His second is a more global take on the issue. The holy grail of Universal Health Coverage (UHC), though, makes an appearance in both; but not without an explanation of the challenges in its implementation and solutions. “UHC is both a moral imperative and an economic incentive for protecting health of all,” writes Dr Reddy, and “one of the best symbols of social solidarity.” It is this solidarity, this collective intention that he envisages for the world of today and tomorrow. He suggests that all sectors — agriculture, pharmaceutical, welfare, education and so on — and all sections of society need to pull together to restore the long disturbed ecological balance, deteriorating climate conditions, and to transform the bleak state of public health.

As a cardiologist and an epidemiologist, Dr Reddy does what an “ideal citizen” in the words of N R Narayana Murthy, co-founder of Infosys should: He practices his knowledge beyond the one field (medicine), observes the world through it, and uses his medical expertise to seek a better and more efficient world. His political conscience allows him to look beyond linear solutions and understand an issue from all possible directions, in

this case, the (entirely manmade) economic and social barriers to global health trends.

With the rise in chronic illnesses over the years, the recurrence of epidemics in the last few decades, and the fresh wounds of the Covid-19 pandemic, health anxieties are on the rise. Action — at an individual, state as well as the international level — is imperative. Insightful, informative, and futuristic books such as Pulse to Planet become vital in inspiring such change. Public health advocacy by experts such as Dr Reddy is as crucial as it gets.

The reviewer is a freelance feature writer