CARDIOVASCULAR JOURNAL OF AFRICA • Vol 22, No 5, September/October 2011
278
AFRICA
Cardio News
South Africa’s PACE is a winner of Boehringer-Ingelheim’s international atrial fibrillation
awareness programme
PACE (Prevent Arrhythmic Cardiac
Events) outpaced some 200 global appli-
cants in the Boehringer-Ingelheim Atrial
Fibrillation Awareness Campaign to win
R500 000 (50 000 Euros) for an AF
awareness programme in South Africa.
They won this award in the Silver cate-
gory and were the most highly ranked
winners outside Europe.
Based at theUniversity of Stellenbosch,
PACE is a non-profit innovative organi-
sation well known to local physicians.
They concentrate on public education and
support for patients who have inherited
life-threatening conductance disturbances
such as the long-QT syndrome.
The co-ordinator of PACE, Franciska
Rossouw, developed and submitted a
pharmacy-based stroke risk-assess-
ment project aimed at preventing 6 000
AF-related strokes a year in South Africa.
The Boehringer-Ingelheim award
winners were announced at a special
event during the 2011 European Society
of Cardiology (ESC) congress in Paris.
Prof Roberto Ferrari, past president
of the ESC, welcomed Boehringer-
Ingelheim’s initiative to prevent one
million AF-related stroke deaths globally.
‘I am also impressed by the quality of the
winners of this one million Euro educa-
tion project, who will now use these funds
to develop atrial awareness programmes
throughout the world.’
Uniquely, these projects were evalu-
ated not only by an expert panel but also
by the general public who voted for the
most innovative of the projects in the 36
participating countries.
Prof John Camm, St George’s Hospital,
UK welcomed this global initiative to
educate on atrial fibrillation. ‘We stand
on the brink of revolutionary therapies
for this increasingly common condition,
which increases five-fold the risk of severe
stroke. Discussions on AF and on-going
education will help reduce patient anxiety
about AF, which patients fear and refer to
as a “tumult in their chest”.’
Some 200 projects were submitted to
the Expert Committee and two million
public votes were recorded in favour of
the winning projects, which came from
all over the world, including China, Peru,
Argentina, Malaysia, Canada and Mexico.
The South African project to be run by
PACE will educate AF patients on their
stroke risk, in partnership withWellscreen
who will conduct stroke risk assessments
in pharmacies throughout South Africa.
For further information, contact Franciska
on tel +27 82 806 1599 or e-mail paceaf-
Jan van der Merwe and Martin van den Berg, marketing personnel at
Boehringer-Ingelheim in South Africa, with Franciska Rossouw, were pleased
to see South Africa among the top winners. Jan comments that Boehringer-
Ingelheim is committed to ensuring that AF patients understand their stroke
risk and are helped to maintain daily effective anticoagulation therapy.
Innovations in Cardiovascular Interventions (ICI) Meeting 2011
Tel Aviv, Israel, 4–6 December 2011
This meeting is for interventional cardiologists, radiologists, electrophysiologists, innovators, entrepreneurs and leading
companies in the field of cardiovascular innovations, focusing on innovative technology and therapies. The ICI is delighted to
announce an international award competition for outstanding innovation to improve the care of patients with cardiovascular
disease.
For more information: e-mail:
, website:
