LAHORE: Due to undergo an open heart surgery in London on Tuesday (tomorrow), the 66-year old Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif is among the dozens of Pakistani and world rulers who have been suffering from heart diseases and consequently had to go under the knife for treatment.
Before we compile a list of the many global rulers who experienced heart strokes, both fatal and non-fatal, it is worth mentioning that men like the 75-year old former American Vice President Dick Cheney is still hale and hearty despite having suffered five heart attacks in 1978, 1984, 1988, 2000 and 2010.
Having smoked approximately three packs of cigarettes per day for nearly 20 years and resultantly operated on numerous occasions, Cheney had also undergone a seven-hour heart transplant procedure at a Virginia hospital at the age of 71 on March 24, 2012.
(References: The April 23, 2012 edition of the New York Times, the CNN, the USA Today, CBS News and Fox News Channel etc) Here follow the names of some of the Pakistani leaders who have / had fragile hearts:
Premier Chaudhry Muhammad Ali Bogra, Premier Chaudhary Muhammad Ali, President and Army Chief Ayub Khan, Pakistan’s first President and last Governor General Sahibzada Sayyid Iskander Ali Mirza and Premier Hussain Shaheed Suhrawardy etc. A little out of context, but historic accounts reveal that Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah had concealed his illness for a greater cause, though it is not possible in today’s world for any leader to keep his or her sickness a closely-guarded secret.
Irish historian, scientist and author Dr. Frank Ryan, in his 1992 book “Tuberculosis: The greatest story never told” writes: “Muhammad Ali Jinnah was suffering from a chronic pulmonary tuberculosis, which had been first diagnosed by his physician Dr. J.A.L. Patel in June 1946. If his enemies had known this, they would have realised that Jinnah was living under a sentence of death. The importance of keeping the true nature of Jinnah’s illness a state secret was later revealed in a book “Freedom At Midnight” by Larry Collins and Dominique LA Pierre.”
Larry Collins and Dominique LA Pierre, the authors of “Freedom At Midnight” had stated:” If Louis Mountbatten, Jawaharlal Nehru or Mahatma Gandhi had been aware in April 1947 of one extraordinary secret, the division threatening India might have been avoided.”
Dr. Frank Ryan had observed: “All they needed to do was to wait a little longer and the one immovable obstacle to Pan-Indian unity would have been removed. The secret was sealed on to the grey surface of a film—a film that could have upset the Indian political equation and would almost certainly have changed the course of Asian history.”
It goes without saying that a few Pakistani historians do not agree that the Quaid had tuberculosis and have challenged the contents of the two afore-mentioned books. Here follows a brief list of some of the many global rulers who were haunted by heart-related issues:
US Presidents Grover Cleveland, William Taft, Warren Harding, Dwight D Eisenhower, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton etc, Russian ruler Joseph Stalin, King Khaled of Saudi Arabia, Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong, Haiti’s dictator Papa Doc Duvalier, North Korean leader Kim Il-Sung and his son and successor Kim Jong-il, Chile’s dictator Augusto Pinochet, legendary British Premier Winston Churchill, former Indian Premier Jawaharlal Nehru, Russian President Boris Yeltsin, Soviet Prime Minister Nikolai Ryzhkov, Turkish President Turgut Ozal, Serbian President Milan Milutinovic, Austrian President Thomas Klestil, former British Premier Tony Blair had visited hospital to correct recurrent heart palpitations in October 2004, Sheikh Rashid bin Muhammad (son of Dubai's ruler Sheikh Muhammad), former Israel Prime Minister Shimon Peres, former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, President of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser and former President of India Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam etc.
(References: The March 10, 2005 edition of the Daily Telegraph, the CNN, the Associated Press, the AFP, the Washington Post, Reuters, the New York Times, USA Today and BBC News etc)
According to the February 20, 2001 edition of the BBC News, the American CIA had calculated that cardiovascular disease was the leading cause of natural death among government heads. The CIA doctors had based their conclusion on a study of news reports that about 64 heads of government had suffered their first attack of chest pain, irregular heart beat or heart attack while in office between 1970 and 1999.
The CIA findings were also published in the globally-acknowledged journal “Annals of Internal Medicine.” The BBC News had stated: “No world leader from the 1990s left office within a year of a first heart attack. But one-third did in the 1980s, as did two-thirds in the 1970s. The most notable case of a world leader suffering from protracted heart problems was former Russian president Boris Yeltsin. He underwent a multiple heart bypass in 1996 and spent most of his last year in office in a hospital before stepping down unexpectedly in 1999. The CIA study said 94% of world leaders who suffered a heart attack or another acute problem a decade ago are still alive, compared with 53% from the 1980s who survived for a decade or more after having heart problems. The rate was only 15% for world leaders from the 1970s.”
