STOP the Heartbreak.
The Citizen today launches a new campaign to help raise awareness of heart problems in the young in a bid to reduce the number of premature deaths.
We are working with the charity CRY (Cardiac Risk in the Young) to highlight the fact that 12 people aged 14 to 35 die of undiagnosed conditions every week.
Ty Townsley, from Tuffley, died in his sleep aged just 15. It is also a year since Matson rugby player Dominic Cullen, 24, died from a heart attack, hours after turning out for his team.
Mark Moore, 27, from Longlevens, suffered a cardiac arrest on the football pitch in August but survived after being revived by paramedics.
These are just three of the stories that have prompted us to launch Stop the Heartbreak, which coincides with CRY's own bid to force the issue into the public domain.
We are encouraging sports clubs, schools and youth organisations to join us and help raise as much money as possible to support CRY's vital work in raising awareness, screening, researching cardiac issues and offering support to those affected.
We are also working to secure a promise that a state-of-the-art mobile heart screening van will come to Gloucestershire.
Ashley Goodwin's story is another that shows just how important awareness of underlying heart problems is.
Ashley, born and bred in Gloucester, died aged 35 on July 21 2007, the day after his birthday.
He was four weeks away from beginning a new chapter in his life as a Bristol police officer. But fell asleep on his sofa and never woke up.
He had hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a thickening of one of his heart ventricles, unknown to anyone.
Ashley's parents, Linda and Geoffrey, of Grosvenor Road in Barnwood, have never been the same since, but don't want anyone else to have to go through the pain they have.
"Our older son lost his brother that day and, to an extent, the parents he had known," said Geoffrey, 66.
"If it was 12 people a week dying from SARS or bird flu, we would be talking about it as an epidemic. Imagine if it was on the news every week – 12 more people have died, 12 more people have died.
"It sounds like a hackneyed phrase, but it's about raising awareness.
"It's so vital for all those youngsters out there. I just don't know what it takes to get things moving."
Alison Cox founded CRY in 1995 after her son Steve was forced to give up on a promising tennis career because mandatory heart screen in the USA uncovered a problem.
"I was told he was incredibly lucky because it hardly ever gets diagnosed," said Alison. "I just thought 'why not'?
"Football is the first sport that has a mandate to screen professional players and other sports are slowly starting to follow suit.
"But it's the filtering down to grass roots level that's really important because that's where most of the problems are."
She added: "It's fantastic that The Citizen is doing this, it has our full backing and any exposure it gets through the media is vitally important to raising awareness."
TY TOWNSLEY'S STORY TY Townsley had a future as bright as any. He was a star rugby player for Coney Hill under-16s and was loved by his family and huge circle of friends. But his life was cut short on January 6 this year when he died in his sleep aged just 15 at his Tuffley Avenue home. Unknown to him, he had suffered a heart attack at least a week earlier and the damage that caused to part of his heart would eventually claim his young life. Had he been aware of the symptoms, or anything feeling wrong, a diagnosis would have been simple. Ty's mum Becky is fully supportive of our Stop the Heartbreak campaign and urged youngsters be vigilant against problems they might not currently have any knowledge of. "The hardest thing for me was that if Ty had known what the symptoms of a heart attack were, he could have been diagnosed," she said. "Even something as simple as a blood test would have found enzymes that would have indicated at a problem. "But he was 15, so why would he know about heart attacks. "It's just devastation, it's so unexpected." A memorial day in Ty's memory at the rugby club this month raised thousands of pounds for CRY. Becky added: "Getting a mobile ECG unit to Gloucestershire would be a huge thing, it would be great. "Even if just one person is diagnosed, that would be a real success." HOW YOU CAN HELP: CRY launched its own campaign in Barnwood yesterday in a bid to raise public awareness of the risk many young people are at. They want people to write to their MPs urging that as many MPs as possible join their All Party Parliamentary Group. This, they hope, will in turn lead to an official endorsement of the charity's work and the eventual introduction of mandatory screening. CRY has printed thousands of postcards with their aims laid out to make it easy for people to simply sign and post off to their local Member of Parliament. A limited number of these are available at The Citizen's offices in The Oxebode. Please pick one up and add your support to the bid. CRY has two mobile heart screening vans, used in conjunction with medical students at St George's Hospital in London, and we want to see one of these visit our county. Our campaign is seeking to raise as much as possible to support CRY's work so stories like those of Ashley Goodwin and Ty Townsley become less frequent. We want to create a roll of honour of sports clubs, youth organisations and schools supporting Stop The Heartbreak and backing efforts to raise awareness of a problem that is claiming 12 young lives a week. If you want to help, call our newsdesk on 01452 698 821 or email us via citizen.news@glosmedia.co.uk