Ministry of Health joined the rest of the world to commemorate World Heart Day 2025 on 29th September in Ghana themed “Don’t Miss a Beat”.
This year’s celebration aims to raise awareness, promote the prevention, early detection, and control of cardiovascular diseases (CVDs).
Cardiovascular diseases kill 20.5 million people every year around the world, with about 75% of these deaths occurring in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). In Ghana, CVDs remain the leading cause of death for both men and women. Our hospitals are seeing more patients with complications that could have been prevented or better managed with early diagnosis, lifestyle interventions, and continuous care.
Evidence shows that 80% of premature deaths from heart diseases can be prevented by practicing healthy lifestyles, including eating fruits and vegetables, reducing intake of highly processed and salted foods, engaging in regular physical activity, maintaining a healthy body weight, avoiding alcohol and tobacco use, self-monitoring your blood pressure regularly, and taking your prescribed medications daily if living with any cardiovascular disease.
The Government, Ministry of Health, and its Agencies have undertaken interventions like the development of the National NCD Policy 2022 to reduce exposure to risk factors that contribute to NCDs and strengthen early detection and management to reduce deaths from NCDs, amongst others.
Other interventions, such as the Ghana Medical Trust Fund (popularly known as the MahamaCares) and the Free Primary Health Care, will address the burden of non-communicable diseases by making evidence-based care universally available, accessible, and affordable to Ghanaians. We, therefore, urge Ghanaians to take advantage of these and many other initiatives to reduce their risks and burden of CVDs.
More importantly, we encourage all key stakeholders to carry out sensitisation and screening activities on this day and throughout the year to help improve the outcomes of heart health in Ghana.
On World Heart Day 2025, let us collaboratively commit to actions that will help reduce the burden of non-communicable diseases among the Ghanaian population and around the world.
