National Hemophilia Awareness Month
Honoring those who navigate life's challenges with strength and grace, raising awareness for a condition that inspires resilience.
Position your healthcare or pharmaceutical brand as a partner in bleeding disorder awareness and patient support during March.
- Share patient stories of resilience and strength in managing hemophilia
- Educate audiences on bleeding disorder symptoms and when to seek care
- Highlight your organization's support programs or research initiatives for hemophilia patients
- Partner with patient advocacy groups for awareness-raising events and educational content
In order to understand why National Hemophilia Awareness Month is so important, it is necessary to know a bit of the disease’s history. It is hard to say when exactly people started suffering from it, but it was first discovered in the 10th century, when physicians began to look deeper into the cases of various people, especially men and boys, who bled to death from seemingly minor injuries.
Sadly, however, the physicians of the 10th century were in no way equipped to study the condition properly, and so hemophiliacs were forced to wait until the 19th century for some answers.
In the meantime, many people continued to suffer from the disease, with some of the most noted cases being those of European royal family members, such as Queen Victoria’s son Prince Leopold. Prince Leopold died at a young age due to internal hemorrhaging caused by a relatively minor fall.
At the time, the condition was “treated” with aspirin, which unbeknownst to the people of the day, only caused it to worsen, as it made the blood of the hemophiliac even thinner than it would have been normally. In 1803, Dr. John Conrad Otto began extensively studying the people he called “bleeders”, and slowly ways to avoid spontaneous, profuse bleeding were discovered, such as the administration of clotting factors.
Unfortunately, however, a definitive cure has not yet been found. It is estimated that 400,000 people the world over suffer from hemophilia, many of which cannot afford proper treatment.