25 Years of a Heartbeat: How Srinivasa Heart Foundation is Empowering India to Save Lives
WARANGAL, India – For a quarter of a century, a quiet revolution in public health has been pulsating from the heart of Telangana. What began as a single exhibition on World Heart Day in 2001 has since evolved into a nationwide movement, equipping tens of thousands of Indians with the most critical skill of all: the power to restart a heart.
Led by the visionary Dr. Srinivas Ramaka, the Srinivasa Heart Foundation (SHF) is celebrating 25 years of pioneering excellence in CPR (Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation) training and preventive cardiology. This milestone is not merely a measure of time, but a testament to a relentless, strategic, and deeply impactful mission to transform bystanders into lifesavers.
From a Single Spark to a Nationwide Flame
The Foundation’s journey in public empowerment began early. Recognizing that most cardiac arrests occur outside hospitals, Dr. Ramaka and his team integrated CPR training into their World Heart Day activities from the very first event. The initial years saw modest numbers—training dozens in local communities. But the vision was always grand.
The strategy was multi-pronged and ingenious:
What started as groundlevel efforts to create community awareness on heart health through the World Heart day events of Dr Srinivas Ramaka and Srinivasa Heart Foundation took shape as a sustained campaign.The Community cardiology events of Srinivasa Heart Foundation were titled as Know Your Heart program. From creating community awareness on heart health through display of posters in 2001,took shape as a small bilingual booklet,Know Your Heart in 2003 and another book in Telugu in 2008-Meeru Mee Gunde.
Every year World Heart Day was organised on a theme mentioned by the World Heart Federation and recognising the sustained efforts of Srinivasa Heart Foundation,the World Heart Federation recognised the HEART program_Health Education and Awareness in Rural Telangana as a Case study,the one and only one form India.
From World Heart Day 2016, apart from creating awareness on heart health,the focus has been on creating awareness on cardiac arrest and CPR.
Grassroots Penetration: Instead of staying confined to urban centres, SHF took community cardiology events and awareness on CPR to the people—to village squares, government hospitals in districts like Jangaon, Eturunagaram, and Mahbubabad, and even tribal areas.
· Diverse Audiences: They trained everyone—school children, college students, NCC cadets, bank employees, university staff, drivers, conductors, and homemakers. The “Marwadi Samaj” in Mahbubabad, high school quiz participants, and Kakatiya University staff were all part of this expanding network of potential rescuers.
· Strategic Partnerships: By collaborating with government bodies, the Indian Medical Association, educational institutions, and organizations like the Indian Red Cross, SHF amplified its reach, ensuring credibility and scalability.
The Evolution of a Lifesaving Campaign
The Foundation’s work culminated in the formal launch of the National CPR Challenge Campaign on World Heart Day 2019. With the powerful slogan “Each One Train One,” the campaign was designed for exponential impact. The goal was audacious: to train a majority of India’s vast population by creating a cascading chain of knowledge, where every person trained would, in turn, train others.
This campaign reached a crescendo on World Heart Day 2018, when Dr. Ramaka and his team trained an unprecedented 1,500 participants in a single day in Hands-Only CPR and AED use, a event featuring a walkathon and flash mob with 500 medical students.
A Legacy Quantified by Lives Empowered
The statistics gleaned from their reports paint a picture of staggering dedication:
· Massive Scale: Though Dr Ramaka has initiated the lay rescuer CPR programs in the year 2009 ,he incorporated it into World Heart Day events also.From training 100 people at a camp in Mahbubabad in 2014 to coordinating Zoom-enabled simultaneous training sessions across multiple districts in 2022, the Foundation has consistently scaled its operations.
· Innovation in Adversity: Even during the pandemic, SHF adapted seamlessly, launching the ART (Awareness,Research and Teaching and Training) initiative via virtual platforms and continuing its media outreach.
· Global Recognition: The Foundation’s commitment to data and research was internationally acknowledged when its registry on Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest received the FAIRest Dataset International Award from Elsevier in 2021.
The Future: Project HEART India
As a prelude to the 25th-anniversary celebrations in 2025, the Foundation has launched its most ambitious project yet: Project HEART India. inaugurated in August 2025 in partnership with schools associations, this project aims to systematically embed high-quality CPR training into the community fabric, starting with the youth. In a single session, 673 high school students were trained by a dedicated team, symbolizing the next generation of lifesavers.
Project HEART (High- school Education and Awareness for Resuscitation Training)India is a Indo-US collaborative project with Dr Vemuri S Murthy ,(a renowned Indo-US Resuscitation expert and Founder of National India Hub Community Health and CPR Training Center,Schaumburg,Illinois ,USA)as Founder and Dr Srinivas Ramaka as cofounder.The project aims in training High school students in India in High-quality CPR and use of an Automated External Defibrillator in the local language with English supplementation.
A Heartbeat for the Nation
The story of the Srinivasa Heart Foundation is more than a case study; it is a blueprint for public health success. For 25 years, Dr. Srinivas Ramaka and his team have demonstrated that the gap between a cardiac arrest victim and the chance of survival can be bridged not just by doctors in ICUs, but by empowered citizens in homes, streets, and workplaces.
Their legacy is measured in the confidence of a student who can use an AED, the readiness of a bus conductor to perform chest compressions, and the hope that when a heart stops in India, someone nearby will know how to make it beat again. In the landscape of Indian healthcare, the Srinivasa Heart Foundation has not just trained people in CPR; it has planted a forest of lifesavers, one heartbeat at a time.
