A MOFFAT mum’s journey to raise awareness of sudden cardiac deaths amongst young people has taken her to the steps of the Scottish Parliament.
Sharon Duncan has been on a mission to both fundraise and raise awareness of the charity Cardiac Risk in the Young (CRY), after her son, David Hill, passed away unexpectedly during a rugby match between Irish and Scottish parliamentarians last year.
The family’s latest initiative has taken their campaigning to a new level when they visited the Scottish Parliament last week and 56 MSPs, including the First Minister Humza Yousaf and leaders of the main opposition parties agreed to support the ‘parliamentary pledge’ on policy changes that will bring heart screening to communities throughout Scotland, and testing thousands of young people.
Sharon and David’s father, Rodger Hill, were delighted with the turnout from MSPs and are hopeful that they can continue to build on the success of their campaign, they said: “We are all so delighted and encouraged by the level of support we saw at our official launch of the MSPSupport4CRY campaign but really believe that this is just the beginning. We’re confident that after such a positive start, interest from across all political parties will continue to grow and that we’ll be able to make real headway in developing a strategy for the prevention of young sudden cardiac death, not least in influencing the decision-making process around our mission of securing a national cardiac screening programme.
“We were blown away by the number of MSPs who signed up to the pledge last week and we’re now focused on hitting the 100 mark – and, ideally, we’re aiming for the day when all 129 MSPs will have backed our campaign with CRY.”
The event was spearheaded by David’s friend and colleague, Dumfriesshire MSP Oliver Mundell, who arranged for the family to take up a prime position at the foot of the main staircase of the Garden Lobby. He said: “I have tremendous respect for Sharon, Rodger and the whole family for their ability to build on David’s legacy by campaigning for political action to ensure other young people don’t die needlessly.”
Chief executive of CRY, Dr Steven Cox added: “This campaign to establish a national strategy for the prevention of young sudden cardiac deaths was first launched with MPs to highlight that much more needs to be done to prevent young sudden deaths. We’ve had tremendous cross-party support which is an acknowledgement of the incredible efforts of all the people raising awareness of what has happened to their family and what could have been done to prevent their loss.
“The support they were able to garner in such a relatively short session in Holyrood is testament to the powerful impact they made that day, as well as the legacy David left and the high regard in which he was clearly held by his colleagues.”
