One week, 17 deaths and over 1,000 confirmed cases. You can count the days on your fingers, but not the victims of the new public health menace -the H1N1 flu. "Its speed is without precedent," says Dr Randeep Guleria, professor of Internal Medicine at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS).

In the midst of a busy calendar when the nation is in the grip of a new and unusual global pandemic, Union Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad spoke to Deputy Editor Damayanti Datta. Excerpts:

Union Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad
Q. The H1N1 virus has arrived finally in India and is spreading fast. How scared should we be?

You are what your numbers are. 0-5-10-25 is the quickest way to sum you up: 0, if your life is tobacco free, 5 for servings of fruits or veggies, 10 for walking 10,000 steps (or 30 minutes of aerobic activity) and 25 for keeping your body mass index below that cut off. That

A simple idea can change the world. The polypill is a case in point. For most heart patients, popping piles of pills is a depressing daily reality: knock back blood-thinners to put off clots, toss down statins to lower cholesterol, swallow a fistful of betablockers, diuretics and ACE inhibitors to simmer down high blood pressure (BP).

Tall, strapping and statuesque, Shivalli M. Chouhan, 34, doesn't look fat, but she insists she is. "It's not my self-image. It's what others tell me," smiles the civil servant with the Indian Defence Accounts Service. It's what her teacher had said long back when she was chosen for a television dance show in school. It's what some of her batchmates had whispered when she won those beauty contests in college and university. Resentful of the constant pressure of other people's unending desire for her to be thin she decided to excel in everything else but looks.

Lifestyle diseases are snuffing out lives and taking away productive years. The future looks menacing as India modernizes at blinding speed.

If all this while you have been fretting about saturated fats and lipo-I proteins, here is one more health I scare: trans fats. These are the I cheap, chemically-treated fats the