My social-media feed rarely goes a day without a young person’s photograph and the same caption: died suddenly of a heart attack. 

A face full of promise becomes an obituary. Family and friends absorb a loss that no post can measure, and the rest of us are left asking why this seems to happen so often.

I am a concerned citizen, and the causes belong to physicians, researchers and public-health institutions. I also want to be careful about what those photographs prove. 

One death gets shared hundreds of times, and our phones bring news from far beyond our own neighbourhoods, so a feed cannot tell us whether deaths in any age group have actually risen. 

The worry is real all the same, and it calls for a transparent answer built on reliable records.

Words need care too, since a heart attack happens when blood flow to the heart is blocked, while cardiac arrest means the heart suddenly stops pumping effectively.

One can lead to the other, but they are different events, and nobody can diagnose an unexplained collapse from a caption. 

“Heart attack” should open an inquiry where the cause is uncertain. Medical institutions can then tell us which deaths have a confirmed cause, which remain unexplained, and what lessons for prevention follow.

An investigation can take months, while a collapse can leave only minutes to act.

Picture a student falling unconscious in a classroom, a passenger dropping at a bus stand, a player going down mid-match. People gather.........

© Kashmir Observer