Today, September 29th, we celebrate World Heart Day. This year the day focuses on creating healthy heart environments by ensuring that everyone has the chance to make healthy heart choices wherever they live, work and play. World Heart Day encourages us all to reduce cardiovascular risk and promote a heart-healthy planet.
World Heart Day also provides an opportunity to shed light on the overwhelming burden of cardiovascular disease around the world – a burden that disproportionately affects middle- and low-income countries like Cambodia, with over 80% of CVD deaths taking place in these countries. It also emphasizes the ongoing need for trained health professionals to help address this burden.
At HVO, we are fortunate to have a number of volunteer cardiologists who contribute their time and expertise to cardiovascular health care in countries facing some of the highest burdens of cardiovascular disease. Their work offers essential teaching and training about the diagnosis and treatment of cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) – the number one cause of death globally. Their efforts improve care quality and access to essential treatments. As one frequent cardiology volunteer wrote following a trip to HVO’s internal medicine project at the Sihanouk Hospital Center of Hope:
The presence of health volunteers is also a strong point of SHCH and helps to bring new information and treatments into the hospital. Since advanced medical training is limited in Cambodia, this was a way for physicians to receive some advanced training without leaving the country.”
In a subsequent assignment in 2015, this volunteer shared a specific story of advancing cardiovascular skills among the local staff and students:
Auscultation was the other thing that helped me develop a relationship with the trainees. Early on, they asked me to listen to a man with a murmur. After examining him, I told them that he had aortic stenosis that was likely severe. They were surprised that I could get that much information from listening to his murmur … That led to a lecture on cardiac auscultation and the start of “auscultatory rounds” that became quite popular. Most days, we would listen to all the patients in the hospital with murmurs. [The trainees] substantially improved their skills to detect and postulate the etiology of the murmur and worked on estimating the severity of the valve lesion. They would ask me to listen to people in the ED with a murmur. If I wasn’t certain of the etiology, we did an echo. That helped all of us learn and improve our auscultatory skills.”
Find out more about how you can Get Involved with HVO’s internal medicine projects – begin the volunteer placement process or contact us to learn more.