CureHeart are proud to support the new awareness campaign "Keep Us Beating" from the BHF

This year CureHeart are proud to support the new BHF awareness campaign “Keep us beating”.

65 powerful stories of real people living with cardiovascular disease across the UK have been shared, each of these people have a BHF red bench dedicated to them “ In Living Memory”’ and located in their  hometowns.

Of particular importance to CureHeart is “Jack’s Story”:

Jack was 17 when he collapsed from a cardiac arrest whist playing basketball. Luckily he received CPR and a defibrillator to restart his heart before he was rushed to hospital.

Jack was diagnosed with the inherited heart muscle condition hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) and remained critically ill on life support of 9 days.

Jack’s family were told he had just an 8% chance of survival and a 2% chance of keeping his own heart. Eventually, doctors were able fit an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD) and a pacemaker. Today, Jack is studying Software Engineering at university and enjoying getting back to just being a regular teenager – all thanks to the help of scientific research.

It is because of Jack’s story and many others like him that the aims of CureHeart has never felt more urgent and life changing.

The BHF came to Oxford to film an interview with CureHeart Scientific Lead Prof Hugh Watkins and meet some of the researchers tasked with the discovery and clinical translation of new treatments for cardiomyopathy.

The video can be found by clicking the link here.