Group takes aim at Cardiovascular Disease in Canada

A working group called the Canadian Heart Health Strategy
and Action Plan released two reports today, Building a Heart Healthy Canada and Realizing Our Vision. With funding from the federal government, they have developed a comprehensive set of sweeping, if sometimes vague, recommendations for addressing cardiovascular disease as an issue with many dimensions including medical, have called for substantial funding ($700 million cdn.) to do this and have set goals that if achieved, would be revolutionary, including a 25% reduction in the mortality rate from CV disease.

The problem is that while the medical recommendations are well developed and specific, the non-medical ones remain more loosely defined and vague. Yet it is these non-medical issues -- mainly diet, exercise, smoking and stress that largely determine individual experience with this disease. And it is only by attacking CV disease at these roots that we will be able to meet the very ambitious targets set by the working group. In other words, this is where the bulk of the resources should be targeted and the effort focused.

In the end, CV disease is much less a medical problem than an educational, political, economic, lifestyle and family one. And learning to understand it this way will go much further toward solving it than greatly expanded medical care (and more to the point, resources) however necessary these may be.