Eight years ago, two cardiologists walked into an empty room in Naharlagun and dared to believe Arunachal Pradesh could have a heart.
Before October 2018, a heart attack here was really a geography problem. The nearest facility capable of opening a blocked coronary artery sat hundreds of kilometres away — across winding mountain roads, unpredictable flights, and stretches of highway prone to landslides. Families emptied their savings, scrambled for vehicles, and prayed. Too often, the journey ended before the treatment could begin. In cardiology, there’s a brutal saying: time is muscle. Every minute a blocked artery stays blocked, more of the heart dies. And for people across Arunachal Pradesh, time was exactly what geography kept stealing.
That is the weight Dr. Jagdish Chandra Barkataki and Dr. Rinchin Dorjee Megeji carried when they started the Department of Cardiology at the Tomo Riba Institute of Health and Medical Sciences (TRIHMS), Naharlagun — as the institution’s very first super-specialty department. No grand inauguration, no gleaming machines, no ready-made team. Just two cardiologists, a conviction, and an enormous amount of work ahead.
Word spread fast, the way it always does in close-knit hill communities. Within three months, echocardiography services were running. Within a year, a five-bedded Intensive Coronary Care Unit was operational. An ICCU in Naharlagun meant that a patient with a dangerous heart rhythm no longer had to survive a four-hour drive to find a monitor. That alone saved lives.
The landmark moment came in August 2023, when Arunachal Pradesh finally got its first-ever cardiac catheterisation laboratory at TRIHMS. The COVID-19 pandemic had delayed it by nearly three years — the cath lab had to wait while doctors fought a different emergency. But when it arrived, it changed everything. Coronary angioplasties, pacemaker implantations, device closures of holes in the heart — procedures that once meant expensive trips to Guwahati, Delhi, or beyond — were now being done right here. A man clutching his chest at 2 a.m. in Naharlagun could now reach a cath lab, have a blocked artery opened with a stent, and be walking home within days. What used to be a desperate gamble became, quietly, routine.
The numbers tell a story that’s hard to ignore. Over 57,000 outpatient visits. More than 1,700 critically ill patients through the ICCU, with a survival rate above 97 per cent. Today, more than 90 per cent of cardiac cases in the state — including complex interventions — are handled right here, without patients leaving home. Think about what that means for families who no longer have to borrow money to travel, or spend weeks stranded in a distant city while a loved one recovers.
On 20 February 2024, the department received the State Gold Medal from the Governor of Arunachal Pradesh. For a department that started with two people and no infrastructure, it felt more than earned.
And then came September 2026. The National Board of Examinations in Medical Sciences accredited TRIHMS Cardiology for the DrNB super-specialty course — making it the first such programme in the entire state. For the first time, young doctors from Arunachal Pradesh can train to become cardiologists right here, on the same patients, the same hills, the same challenges they will one day serve. That is not a small thing. Specialists trained in a place tend to stay in that place.
The department now has three DM cardiologists, a full cath lab team, and an ICCU that has grown from five beds to eight. The next goal is a Department of Cardiothoracic and Vascular Surgery at TRIHMS — which would push the retention of cardiac patients from 90 per cent to close to 100.
Eight years, two doctors, one dream. And the best chapters, they say, are still ahead.
