{"id":2997,"date":"2019-12-18T19:31:00","date_gmt":"2019-12-18T19:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/world-heart-federation.org\/news\/the-year-in-review-whfs-achievements-and-highlights-of-2019\/"},"modified":"2021-04-30T19:19:15","modified_gmt":"2021-04-30T18:19:15","slug":"the-year-in-review-whfs-achievements-and-highlights-of-2019","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/world-heart-federation.org\/news\/the-year-in-review-whfs-achievements-and-highlights-of-2019\/","title":{"rendered":"The Year in Review: WHF’s achievements and highlights of 2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
Dear Friends,<\/strong><\/p>\n As we approach the end of 2019, I am thrilled to be able to look back on what has been a truly remarkable year for both the World Heart Federation and the global cardiovascular community as a whole.<\/p>\n In August, we held our first joint Congress<\/a> with the European Society of Cardiology, which attracted an extraordinary 33,000 delegates, and convened global health leaders at the 4th<\/sup> Global Summit on Circulatory Health<\/a> to explore technological innovations and their implications for cardiovascular health.<\/p>\n 2019 was also the year of the first United Nations High-Level Meeting on Universal Health Coverage<\/a> (UHC), where we convened Ministers of Finance from different regions and launched a ground-breaking report<\/a> examining the attitudes and beliefs of Finance Ministries toward taxing tobacco and other harmful products to help fund UHC at the national level.<\/p>\n In October, we welcomed the sixth cohort of WHF Emerging Leaders<\/a> \u2013 a programme created just five years ago and which has already developed into a 150-strong expert community of global health leaders. This year, a team of Emerging Leaders, supported by WHF, led the effort to add new oral anticoagulants (NOACs) to the World Health Organization Essential Medicines List<\/a>, a critical step to improve the availability and affordability of these important drugs.<\/p>\n Over the last year, we stepped up our efforts against neglected cardiovascular diseases. During the World Health Assembly<\/a> in May, we supported the ultimately successful effort to establish an official World Chagas Day<\/a>, and our RHD Taskforce<\/a>, a global community of leaders and advocates who are working to consign rheumatic heart disease (RHD) to the history books, has been working tirelessly to secure improved access to the essential drug benzathine penicillin G in low-resource settings.<\/p>\n