Heart Failure Awareness Month | May, 2023

Watch now – #HighlightHeartFailure video

Share the campaign message in your local language:

Get Involved

These materials have been developed to help you share key messages from the campaign and raise awareness of Heart Failure. We encourage you to copy the messages and share them with your network. Feel free to edit the posts and tailor the messages to best reach your audience.

Please use the hashtag #HighlightHeartFailure and #HeartFailure2023 along with the hashtag in your local language. Please also tag @globalhearthub so we can reshare your content.

The social media packs include graphics for social, editable templates for translation, the campaign logo and supportive messaging.

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.

About Heart Failure

• It is estimated that 60 million people worldwide are affected by heart failure, and with the right medication and lifestyle, it can be managed.
• Heart failure is a serious chronic condition, but it doesn’t have to stop you from living. Heart Failure doesn’t mean your heart is about to stop. It just means your heart muscle isn’t pumping enough blood to support the needs of the body.
• The most common causes of heart failure include coronary heart disease, myocardial infarction (heart attack), congenital heart defects, high blood pressure, or damaged heart valves.
• Is heart failure the same as a heart attack? Many people think they are the same, but they are different. A heart attack happens suddenly when the blood supply to your heart is blocked. Heart Failure is a long-term condition where the heart cannot pump enough blood through the body to meet its needs.

Know The Symptoms of Heart Failure

Heart failure can affect different people in different ways. Symptoms can come on suddenly and be initially severe (acute heart failure) or they can appear over time and gradually get worse (chronic heart failure). If you have heart failure, you may have one, or a combination, of these symptoms.

Living with Heart Failure

A healthy lifestyle is important to live as full life as possible with heart failure. Improving heart failure self-care lowers the risk that you will need hospital stays, improves quality of life and even saves lives. You should follow the lifestyle and self-care recommendations suggested by your care team.