UK reeling from ‘worst heart care crisis in living memory’

Britain is in the throes of a “heart care crisis” which has people dying from early heart and circulatory diseases at the highest rate in over a decade.

Authorities at the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) are flummoxed as to why premature deaths from cardiac events among Brits under 75 — which had been declining for almost sixty years — have been increasing since 2020 in a clear trend reversal.

According to an analysis by the British Heart Foundation (BHF), premature cardiovascular deaths in 2022 reached 80 out of 100,000, the highest rate since 2011, Sky News reports. Figures from 2022 show that 39,000 people — around 750 per week — died from heart attacks, strokes, or coronary heart disease.

“We’re in the grip of the worst heart care crisis in living memory,” said BHF Associate Medical Director Dr. Sonya Babu-Narayan. “Every part of the system providing heart care is damaged, from prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and recovery to crucial research that could give us faster and better treatments.

“This is happening at a time when more people are getting sicker and need the NHS more than ever. I find it tragic that we’ve lost hard-won progress to reduce early death from cardiovascular disease.”

Last year the BHF also warned about a worrying rise in atrial fibrillation, or abnormal heartbeat, which affects about 1 in 45 Britons today.

After examining statistics from the NHS, the BHF discovered that atrial fibrillation instances have surpassed 1.5 million, a sharp increase from the one million cases recorded in 2013.

British health authorities have been bewildered by a recent rise in mysterious deaths, leaving researchers and journalists searching for explanations. 

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) reports that, compared to the five-year national average, there were 32,000 extra deaths between May and December 2022, excluding deaths from COVID-19. The age range of 15–44 has the greatest cumulative death rate.

Many theories have been proposed, such as the one advanced by UK Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty, who claimed that a decrease in heart medicine prescriptions was the reason behind the deaths — even though no such decrease was discovered. Others tried blaming the deaths on doctors’ strikes, though the British Medical Association disputed this assertion as well. In May, the Mirror reported that “climate change” may be a factor because “[h]eat in particular persistently returns during the summer, and given climate change will only continue to pose such a fatal threat.”

These days, “medical experts” are demanding an inquiry into the excess deaths, mostly due to worries that the COVID-19 vaccinations could be at fault.

According to Doctorcall Medical Director Dr. Charles Levinson, the government’s “radio silence” is allowing “dangerous theories” to proliferate. Express UK clarified that these theories originate from “anti-vaxxers.”

“A refusal to openly discuss these statistics is an abdication of responsibility from parts of the scientific community, leading to an irreversible erosion of trust by parts of society,” said Levinson. “There has been radio silence on the crisis from almost all, leaving a vacuum which is being filled by dangerous theories.”

Oxford University’s Centre for Evidence-based Medicine Director Professor Carl Heneghan also demanded an inquiry into the growing death toll, calling any idea linking vaccines “wild speculation.”

“There has been a complete failure by the Government to investigate these deaths correctly. This means we don’t know how to prevent further unnecessary deaths, fuelling wild speculation about the drivers,” said Heneghan.