Proclamation 4263—American Heart Month, 1974

America is in the midst of a deadly epidemic. Diseases of the heart and blood vessels claim more American lives than all other causes of death combined. It is estimated that nearly 28 million Americans have some major form of heart and blood vessel disease.

Heart and blood vessel diseases cost the Nation an estimated $30 billion annually. In addition to lost income and expenditures for medical care, an estimated 200,000 man-years of production are lost each year because of this health hazard. And the greatest cost of course, the cost in human suffering, is one that cannot be measured in monetary terms.

In 1948, with passage of the National Heart Act, this country launched a comprehensive effort to help alleviate the burden of cardiovascular diseases. This landmark legislation created the Federal Government's National Heart Institute, bringing the public sector into a close alliance with the private sector as exemplified by the American Heart Association, a national voluntary health agency.

During the past 26 years, this partnership has fostered extraordinary progress in the fields of diagnosis, prevention, treatment, surgery, coronary care, and rehabilitation. Still heart and blood vessel diseases remain our Nation's deadliest health threat.

To encourage a continuing effective attack on cardiovascular diseases, the Congress, by a joint resolution approved December 30, 1963 (77 Stat. 843), requested the President to issue a proclamation designating February of each year as American Heart Month.

Now, Therefore, I, Richard M. Nixon, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim the month of February, 1974 as American Hearth Month. I invite the Governors of the States, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, and officials of other areas subject to the jurisdiction of the United States to issue similar proclamations.

I urge the people of the United States to consider fully the nationwide problem of cardiovascular diseases, and to support programs essential to bring about its solution.

In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand this fourth day of February, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred seventy-four, and of the Independence of the United States of America the one hundred ninety-eighth.

RICHARD NIXON