Ladakh is an isolated mountainous land on the western edge of the Tibetan Plateau. Until the middle of the 19th century, it was an independent Tibetan Buddhist kingdom, but since that time it has been part of the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. Modernization did not even begin to reach Ladakh until the middle of 1970’s. There were no roads, no electricity, no indoor plumbing and no allopathic hospitals or clinics. When Nehru flew into Ladakh to see this new region of his new country, he rode by horseback from the airfield at which he landed to the capital.

Today, much of Ladakh still exists in this same state. Two slim mountainous roads connect Ladakh to the rest of modern India, and both of them are closed by snow for eight months of the year. Leh, the capital of Ladakh, now has two hospitals – neither of which has a modern operating room, and a small corps of dedicated physicians – most of whom are general practitioners.When a person has a heart problem in Ladakh, more often than not it goes undiagnosed – either because the patient has no access to a physician, or because the necessary diagnostic expertise and/or diagnostic equipment are not available. Traditionally, the only remedy available to a Ladakhi heart patient was to go to New Dehli to get diagnosis and treatment, if they were lucky enough to have the resources and health to do so.

The Ladakh Heart Foundation was created, in 1997, to address and resolve these problems. For years, the Foundation has been providing the best possible medical care its resources would allow to Ladakhi heart patients. The Foundation is now in the midst of building a hospital with two operating theaters that will specialize in and vastly improve its ability to diagnose and treat heart disease. The building in which the hospital will be housed is nearing completion. This proposal is a request for funding to support the purchase and installation of the medical equipment that will make the Ladakh Heart Foundation Hospital operational and give it the ability to give its patients state of the art diagnosis and treatment for cardiovascular disease. This will include the equipment that will be used to create two operating theatres in which open heart surgery can and will be performed.

(From www.ladakhheart.com)