You may have seen on billboards across the UK from the British Heart Foundation (BHF) Charity inviting you to ‘watch your own heart attack’. As gruesome as this sounds, this is a television event that could help save lives.
This advert will air on ITV1 on August 10 at 9.17pmd uring the Midsomer Murders break and will help to raise awareness of heart attack symptoms, and could be the single most important two minutes of television you will ever see.
A number of celebrities are supporting the campaign to help it reach a wider audience using the slogan “I’ll be watching”, will you?
Heart disease is the UK’s biggest killer with almost a quarter of a million people suffering heart attacks every year, a third of whom die before reaching hospital . The BHF campaign will show people how important it is to recognise heart attack symptoms and urge people to call 999 immediately when they experience them.
Betty McBride, Director of Policy and Communications at the BHF, says “We’re bringing heart attacks to life in living rooms across the UK because understanding how one could feel might mean the difference between life and death.”
Paul Phillips, Chief Executive Officer of the East Midlands Ambulance Service, says ambulance services across the UK fully support the BHF campaign. “We welcome any efforts that endeavour to save lives by teaching people how to identify a possible heart attack and encouraging them to call 999 more quickly. We’d rather attend a false alarm than arrive too late.”
