MP to attend awareness campaign at the club
AFC Wimbledon will be encouraging supporters to get checked out before Saturday’s home match against Burton Albion as part of this year’s National Blood Pressure Testing Awareness week.
Siobhain McDonagh, MP for Mitcham & Morden, will be among those at the Cherry Red Records Stadium on Saturday when AFC Wimbledon will be offering free blood pressure checks ahead of this match in collaboration with NHS South West London.
There will be a team of NHS Live Well members at the front of the stadium providing checks from noon until kick-off. As part of this, they will be joined by the AFC Wimbledon first-team management, club captain Alan Bennett and Commercial Director Ivor Heller.
This year’s National Blood Pressure Testing Awareness week runs from 16-22 September and Wimbledon’s Community Football Scheme (CFS) are actively getting involved in the “Know Your Numbers” event.
There are very good reasons to have your blood pressure checked and these include the following:
• One in three adults (16 million) in the UK have high blood pressure.
• More than five million people don't know they have high blood pressure - that's why it's called the silent killer.
• People with high blood pressure are three times as likely to develop heart disease or suffer strokes, and twice as likely to die from these, as people with a normal blood pressure.
• Each year 125,000 adults in the UK have a heart attack or stroke in which high blood pressure is a key factor - that's a preventable stroke or heart attack every four minutes.
It’s all completely free on the day so please don’t hesitate to get yourself checked out with one of the NHS Live Well professionals on Saturday.