We needed to remind Australian doctors that whilst heart failure progresses slowly, it eventually shatters the lives of patients and their carers.

Symptoms, like swollen legs and breathlessness, are often mistaken for, or even dismissed by doctors as normal signs of ageing . Other conditions such as asthma and diabetes can mask heart failure and delay its diagnosis.

This image likens heart failure to the way cracks cause the gradual destruction of a plaster-covered wall. Its role was to humanise heart failure: To address the misperception of the ‘stable’, ageing patient, and amplify the human cost of the disease. Short-term, the campaign is designed to encourage doctors to take a greater interest in diagnosing and acting upon heart failure. The long term goal is to narrow the problem down from being a broad, societal issue- to being a patient issue which doctors can and should do something about.