Heart and February have a close connection with each other. Other than Valentine’s day that makes your heart beat faster as your loved one does everything to make you feel special, the Congenital Heart Defect Awareness week marks the second most important event that is associated closely with heart.

Congenital Heart Disease is a disease that affects the health of the heart of newborns. It’s not a specific disease but rather a condition that defines heart abnormality at birth. With a heart that is abnormal in terms of heart walls, valves and vessels come a number of other specific diseases that haunts a child for a long time; some of these can become a mortal peril. Pulmonary Atresia, Atrial Septal Defect, and Tricuspid Atresia are a few diseases that become life-threatening.

CHD is caused by several reasons which may range from genetic to bad lifestyle choices by the mother during pregnancy. Sometimes certain illnesses during pregnancy like viral fever causes child to be born with a Congenital Heart Defect and these causes have increased the chance of newborns to suffer from CHD.

Every year in the US, 40,000 babies are born with CHD which makes it the most common form of birth defect. This becomes the sole reason why it should be spread awareness about and made known to the general public. While several organizations work to achieve that, you too can show your support by doing the following.

Understand: The most important thing you can do is to understand what causes CHD and how it can be prevented. Knowledge can solve most of the problems associated with CHD. Being aware of it will let you help first you and then those around you. 25% of the CHD cases require surgery which you’ll only know if you understand why it happens. So talk to your local doctor about CHD, research about it and let yourself be equipped with the knowledge to fight it.

Share: Social media is a great platform where you can share your word about the things you support and need people to hear about. Thus, spreading a word here about CHD will let you share effectively the grasp you have on the subject. You can effectively share videos, texts, information and other infographic methods to let the people know about the disease. You can also share stories about survivors and those who were somehow affected by it.

Be visible: It’s also important that your support is visible to those who are unaware about it. To achieve this, you can make your own wristbands red wristbands. These are wristbands quite popularly used to show support for CHD during the CHD awareness week February 7th – 14th and a number of online services will let you gain access to them. Thus, wear these awareness wristbands and let others gaze upon it and ask you your reason of wearing it. Custom rubber bracelets are perfect for starting a conversation and can help you to share information about it.

Help: Finally it’s imperative to assist those who are affected by this dreadful disease. All the awareness has to eventually assist those in need and if you aren’t doing the same, all your efforts are going in vain. You have to lead by example to go out and assist with your support; psychological or monetary.

Finally, remember that CHD doesn’t mean the end of life. It’s treatable via an operation. Although the effects are lifelong, someone affected by CHD can live a normal life while being a little careful. It is important we accept them into our society and by sharing this world with them equally.