World Heart Day

With three very successful World Heart Day campaigns behind us, we will soon be embarking on the fourth annual World Heart Day, which this year will be dedicated to Women, Heart Disease and Stroke. This topic was chosen since a majority of women underestimate their risk of heart disease: more than 60% of women identify breast cancer as their greatest health concern when they are in fact eight times more likely to die of heart disease.

Every year, World Heart Day is held in over 90 countries around the world with the aim of increasing awareness of cardiovascular disease risk factors and encouraging people to take charge of those they can control by adopting a healthy lifestyle. All of this will help to reinforce „a heart for life“, the World Heart Day slogan.

This web site serves as a common outlet for all the latest information on World Heart Day activities and the World Heart Federation’s materials for the World Heart Day campaign. It has been redesigned to make its ever-growing stock of information more accessible from one year to the next. It holds information accumulated since the inception of World Heart Day, through the first, second and third World Heart Days, and reaches to this very day. It contains member activities, newsletters, press releases, news items, the latest studies on cardiovascular disease and a wealth of other pertinent information.

World Heart Day came into being in 1999 as an inspiration of then-WHF President, Dr. Antoni Bayés de Luna, who had the vision that all World Heart Federation members should, with one voice, spread the word about heart health and a heart for life. His dream has become a reality: World Heart Day is celebrated on the last Sunday in September every year.