Raising awareness to bring change
Raising awareness is a key objective for us at The Dinosaur Trust. In fact, raising awareness about PH worldwide is crucial, as many patients live in countries where diagnosis, medication, life saving procedures and systems like organ donation registers are limited or non existent.
Our friends at the PVRI have conducted extensive, global research into PH diagnosis and the findings are astonishing. Here are some details that their research has uncovered:
Pulmonary vascular disease (PVD) is a condition that is caused by pulmonary hypertension. The progressive obstruction of the lung blood vessels means they do not carry as much oxygen as they should, depriving the body of the oxygen it needs to properly function. It is estimated that over 70 million people in the world suffer from PVD, although this figure was recently challenged by several observations:
An echocardiography study in a general population in central Europe estimated 2.6% pulmonary hypertension (PH) prevalence (Moreira et al, PLoS One 10(6): e0130072, 2015) among hospitalised patients in the US, the diagnosis of PH increased several fold over the past decades and the Heart of Soweto Study demonstrated that in the context of urban migration, air pollution and high prevalence of infections approximately 20% of all hospitalised patients present with some variant of PH.
PH is a potentially fatal illness is often mis-diagnosed or goes undiagnosed. It can affect people of all ages and socio-economic backgrounds, including many fit young athletes.
Current estimates suggest that PH is the fourth most common form of heart disease, affecting around 200 million people across the globe.
The PVRI is working with global health regulators, (including the World Health Organization, the Non-Communicable Disease Alliance, and the World Heart Federation), to measure the global burden of PH and to campaign for better healthcare and drug availability for all PH patients worldwide.
Many thanks to the PVRI for sharing its research with us. Find out more about how The Dinosaur Trust and The PVRI work together.