Did you know heart disease kills 51 Australians every day? Valentine’s Day, Thursday 14 February, is also Heart Research Australia’s Wear Red Day! Wear something RED on Valentine’s Day and help raise awareness for heart disease and donate vital funding for heart research. North Shore Mum Jenny, shares her experience with heart disease.
Almost five years ago my beautiful, little newborn baby was diagnosed with congenital heart disease and had two surgeries including open heart surgery within her first two weeks of life.
Completely broken and not knowing how to juggle my other 2 confused and sad children at home with my newborn undergoing surgery in the NICU, I turned to North Shore Mums. The lovely messages of support I received was huge with so many wonderful mums reaching out to me who had been in a similar situation. Their messages and support helped me put one foot in front of the other and trudge through each day. They helped me get through that horrendous time more than they will ever realise.
Beautiful Zoe smiling for mum’s camera
Fast-forward a few years and I now work for Heart Research Australia*, helping keep families together for longer and change the future of Australia’s devastating statistics for heart disease. With heart disease being Australia’s single leading cause of death and killing 51 Australians every day¹ it is difficult to find someone who hasn’t been touched by heart disease, whether someone close to them or themselves. Heart Research Australia’s mission is to keep families together for longer and do this through raising awareness of the risk factors and symptoms of heart disease and providing funding for heart research.
On Valentine’s Day, the day of hearts, we invite everyone to wear RED to raise much needed awareness for heart disease and funding for heart research.
Please be heart smart. Knowing the symptoms of a heart attack can save irreversible damage done to the heart by receiving treatment sooner. Knowing the risk factors for heart disease can enable you to modify your behaviour and build healthy habits of regular physical activity, healthy eating and being smoke free to keep your heart healthy. Prevention is better than treatment. If you are concerned about anything see your GP and ask for a heart health check.
With almost three times more women dying of heart disease than breast cancer this is a cause that desperately needs more awareness and research funding.
So this Thursday, who are you wearing RED for?
DONATE TO HEART RESEARCH AUSTRALIAClick here to find out more about Heart Research Australia and sign up for Wear Red Day.
¹Australian Bureau of Statistics 2018, Causes of Death 2017, ABS cat. no. 3303.0, September.
*About Heart Research Australia
Heart Research Australia is a not-for-profit organisation supporting world class and emerging researchers to conduct ground-breaking research into prevention, diagnosis and treatment of heart disease. We work directly with Royal North Shore and North Shore Private hospitals with our senior researchers also being clinical cardiologists within these hospitals.
