This year’s theme will focus on: a life-course approach to the prevention and control of cardiovascular disease (CVD) with a focus on women and children...

...because healthy children lead to healthy adults and healthy adults lead to healthy families and communities.

Before the 1900s, there were very few people who died from heart disease, and this is even more reason why people in general should know and be educated about heart disease. World Heart Day was created in 2000 to inform people all over the world that heart disease is one of the world's leading causes of death, claiming approximately 17.3 million lives each year and the numbers are rising. It is expected that by 2030, 23 million people will die from a heart related disease.

There are a number of factors that can cause heart disease including genetics, substance abuse, chromosome abnormalities and smoking. It is possible for a person to suffer from the more common type of heart disease which is heart failure that can occur due to high blood pressure, diabetes or kidney disease. Common causes of heart disease are poor diet, combined with a lack of exercise, and because in today's hectic lifestyles, people cannot spare the time to exercise and are more prone to living sedentary lives thus the risk of contracting heart disease is much greater then was the case a few decades ago.

So if you want to minimise the risk to the health of your heart, you need to ensure that you take proper care of what you eat, regular exercise, keep your glucose levels normal and avoid a stressful life.