Von Willebrand Disorder was the focus of World Haemophilia Week this year. We fully appreciate the need for greater education about VWD, greater public awareness and greater emphasis from the Society. To this end, VWD was the sole the focus of our events this year.
We had two webinars, one on ‘VWD Guidelines & Research for Diagnoses & Treatment’ with Dr. Michelle Lavin & Professor James O’Donnell and another on ‘Living with VWD’, a discussion panel with I.H.S. members Breda Quealy, Barry Quealy, Donal McCann & Shannon Carey. Two great and informative webinars that you can watch below.
We launched our new VWD booklet and animated video on social media that we hope will help raise awareness. We also rolled out a social media campaign with Breda Quealy & her son Barry who both have VWD. In this series of video clips, they give an insight into living with VWD. You can watch the compilation of clips here.
We also gained so very good national coverage over the week, the highlight being Shannon Carey and Dr Michelle Lavin’s appearance on Virgin Media’s Ireland AM, on Saturday April 17. If you missed it, you can watch it here.
Von Willebrand Disorder (VWD) is the most common inherited bleeding disorder and 90% of people with VWD globally remain undiagnosed.
It is a complex condition. We hope our activities over the course of the week helped raise awareness and this was not a one off, we are committed to a much greater focus on raising awareness of VWD and advocating for better treatment of persons with VWD.