The Kashmir Care Foundation (KCF) and the Gauri Kaul Foundation (GKF) recently convened a conversation that involved physicians and public health experts for an interactive session titled “The Quadruple Problem of Our Times: Fatty Liver Disease, Diabetes, Cardiovascular Disease, and Acute & Chronic Kidney Disease.”

The title sounds clinical. But the problem it describes isn’t distant or abstract—it’s at our dinner tables, in our salted noon chai (in Kashmir), in oily foods, in the large portions we eat, in sedentary lifestyles (especially in winter), and increasingly, in our children.These four conditions are usually discussed as separate diseases, treated by separate specialists, in separate hospital wards, and at different times in our lives. But they share the same roots, feed off one another, and, encouragingly, respond to many of the same fixes. 

Understanding them together, as one interconnected picture, is the first step to actually doing something about them. The session led to the launch of a KCF and GKF Wellness Hour Series (Sehat Nama), where we organise sessions grounded in clinical science and public health and guided by experts. 

A Regional Crisis, not a Hypothetical OneThe numbers from Jammu and Kashmir over the past two years should worry every household.•    Surging Diabetes Rates: The National Family Health Survey (NFHS-6, 2023-24) found that 13% of women and 11.3% of men in J&K now have high blood sugar or take medication for it — up sharply from 8.7% and 8% in NFHS-5. Urban areas fare even worse, reaching 17% among urban women and 14.6% among urban men. Nearly 40% of all diabetes cases in the region remain completely undiagnosed.

•    The Jammu Spike: The landmark........

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