Congenital Heart Defect Awareness Week
The primary purpose of Congenital Heart Defect Awareness day is to raise awareness of congenital heart defect (CHD) which is actually the most common birth defect. It affects approximately 1% of new-borns with more than 40,000 babies born with heart defects in the United States each year. Every day, a little over 10,800 babies in the US are born and 411 of them have some type of birth defect. Out of the 411 with birth defects, 87 will be born with a congenital heart defect. This number is more than cerebral palsy (27), Down syndrome (12), sickle cell disease (27) and oral/facial clefts (11). This is according to the March of Dimes.