The European Alliance for Cardiovascular Health (EACH) – a unique European alliance bringing together patients, healthcare professionals, insures, researchers and industry – presented its cardiovascular Health Plan for Europe to policymakers today.
Cardiovascular disease1 (CVD), mainly heart attacks and strokes, remains Europe’s leading cause of death today, impacting the lives of more than 60 million Europeans every day, and costing the EU economy 210 billion EUR every year. The disease affects the young and the old, women and men, and is linked with huge inequalities.
CVD is Europe’s biggest health challenge, further compounded by COVID-19, which brought to light the high vulnerability of CVD patients who suffered from backlogs in diagnosis and care and needs to be addressed through a comprehensive policy response.
The proposed Action Plan aims to reduce premature and preventable deaths in Europe by one third in 2030, improve access for all to high quality cardiovascular risk assessments, to set multi-disciplinary care pathways and pave the way for greater quality of life. To achieve this, focus will need to be on primary prevention at population level, improvements in secondary prevention through timely detection, equal access to high quality patient-centred healthcare and an increased uptake of rehabilitation.
The EACH CVH Plan aims to build further on the EU Non-Communicable Diseases Initiative ‘Healthier Together’, expected in June 2022. The Plan will be informed by the realities in the EU Member States, and an important aspect of implementation will be the creation of national CVH plans, tailored to national realities and needs.
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