Patient and public awareness
The 2023 Global Heart Hub Heart Failure Awareness Month Campaign aims to:
educate the public on Heart Failure. We seek to raise awareness of the signs, symptoms, and risk factors associated with heart failure, as well as the importance of early detection and effective management. Their campaign this year focuses on bringing attention to heart failure using the slogan #HighlightHeartFailure and save lives.
GHH are proud supporters of the BSH 25in25 initiative and the Freedom from Failure campaign to recognise the symptoms of heart failure and seek medical help early:
Fighting For Breath
Fatigue
Filling with Fluid
Why creating awareness about Heart Failure is so important
The Heart Failure Patient Council is united in the view that heart failure is poorly recognised and not well understood by both the general public and healthcare professionals. There is global consensus that:
The early signs and symptoms of heart failure are often dismissed as normal
signs of ageing and thus overlooked as early presentation of the disease
There are significant gaps in access to diagnostics in primary care, which result in inequities and delays in diagnosis. Heart failure diagnoses are frequently made late and often the patient has developed acute disease
•There is considerable variation and inequity of access to international best practice and specialist care, including access to heart failure nurse specialists (both in hospital and in the community)
Failure and delays in recognising and treating heart failure appropriately is contributing to high hospital admission and re-admission rates, with consequential economic burden on healthcare systems and huge impact on patients and carers
