The Heart and Stroke Foundation South Africa (HSFSA) will continue driving its awareness campaign about heart health during September, declared Heart Awareness Month. The campaign’s climax will be World Heart Day on 29 September.
Prof. Pamela Naidoo, chief executive officer (CEO) of the HSFSA, said the foundation aimed to make an impact on heart disease awareness and, through the campaign strategy, also reduce the burden of cardiovascular disease (CVD).
“Taking a comprehensive look at the CVD statistics pertaining to the mortality and morbidity rates in the South African context, it is alarming that South Africa is still facing a crisis of CVD,” said Naidoo.
“Together with key stakeholders, we have realised that the South African public does not fully understand the complexity of CVD. There are many medical conditions that constitute the cluster of CVDs. These conditions added up to an estimated 17% of all reported deaths in 2020.”
Naidoo said the finding was done by Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) in 2020 and highlighted mortality trends, indicating that diabetes mellitus (DM), hypertensive disease, cerebrovascular disease and heart disease were marked in the top ten leading natural causes of death in the country.
Over the four-week period of the awareness campaign being run in September, each week will have an exclusive related theme on heart failure:
- “What is heart failure?” for week one;
- “The causes of heart failure” for week two;
- “Management of heart failure and living with heart failure” for week three; and
- “Diabetes type 2 and other risk factors for heart failure” will be the theme for week four.
Naidoo said the HSFSAs goals would align with that of the World Heart Federation (WHF) on World Hearth Day. This year’s global theme is “Use Heart for Action”.
“The primary theme for 2024 is on heart failure and its key risk factors,” she said.
