Proclamation 5542

By the President of the United States of America A Proclamation

Liver diseases claim 50,000 lives in the United States each year and are the fourth leading cause of death of Americans between the ages of 15 and 65. There are more than 100 liver disorders. Some of these are progressively debilitating and often fatal. Liver diseases strike infants, children, adolescents, and adults, regardless of sex, race, or economic status. Unfortunately, people with liver disease suffer not only physically from the disease, but also emotionally from the unjust stigma placed on them by the common, but mistaken, notion that liver disease is caused only by alcoholism.

Through the American Liver Foundation, a network of volunteers, families, researchers, and health care professionals throughout the United States has dedicated itself to funding and increasing research to find the causes, treatments, cures, and ways to prevent these devastating diseases. The American Liver Foundation, the only national organization to focus on all types of liver disease, is committed to promoting the health of all Americans by increasing public awareness of all conditions that can lead to liver disease and by supporting and enhancing the quality of life for those individuals and their families who must cope with a liver disease.

The Congress, by Senate Joint Resolution 202, has designated the month of October 1986 as "American Liver Foundation National Liver Awareness Month" and authorized and requested the President to issue a proclamation in observance of this occasion.

Now, Therefore, I, Ronald Reagan, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim the month of October 1986 as American Liver Foundation National Liver Awareness Month. I urge the people of the United States and educational, philanthropic, scientific, medical, and health care organizations and professionals to learn more about the liver, to support appropriate efforts to discover the causes and cures of all types of liver disease, and to aid those who suffer from the crushing physical, psychological, and financial burden of a liver disease.

In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand this eighth day of October, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and eighty-six, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and eleventh.

RONALD REAGAN

[Filed with the Office of the Federal Register, 12:06 p.m., October 9, 1986]