Amanda Hack is now pushing for a national screening programme, with 12 young people a week dying suddenly in the UK from a previously undiagnosed heart condition
A Labour MP whose niece lost her partner to tragedy has called for more screenings to protect people with heart conditions.
Amanda Hack is pushing for a national screening programme, with 12 young people (aged 35 and under) a week dying suddenly in the UK from a previously undiagnosed heart condition. Of these deaths, figures show 80% of them will occur with no prior symptoms.
It comes after the partner of her niece, Isabella Wright, died in his sleep. Ms Hack, the MP for North West Leicestershire, said: “A couple of years ago my niece who was just in her early 20s, suddenly her boyfriend passed away overnight because of an unknown heart condition.
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“A young fit healthy lad in his 20s and it’s caused huge devastation not only to my niece but obviously to his family, his mother was obviously devastated. It’s this kind of sense of real injustice that these young people are dying from something an ECG, an Echocardiogram could have picked up.
“We’re not going to be able to eradicate it completely, but I think one of the things for me is making sure we can prevent as much of this as we can, because it’s completely avoidable.”
Ms Hack pointed towards the system in Italy, where a national screening program for competitive young athletes has significantly reduced sudden cardiac death by 90%.
Her calls were echoed by Suzanne Rowan, a representative for charity Cardiac Risk in the Young (CRY), whose husband Robert died in 2018 from cardiomyopathy failure.
She said: “It’s really important to me that I can try and help and get people tested, so that other families are spared going through what we’ve gone through because it’s still impactful seven years down the line.
“I think it’s important for students, young people, for athletes, and those that have a family history of symptoms. I just think that for anybody who would like the option to be tested they should, it’s better to be preventative.”
Since CRY was founded in 1995, they have tested around 343,000 young people. CRY CEO Dr Steven Cox said: “It is fundamentally wrong that the only reason that tens of thousands of young people in the UK are able to have their hearts tested each year is because bereaved families are forced to raise the funds themselves.
“Families who, through unimaginable loss, fund CRY’s screening programme so that others might be spared the tragedy they now live with — knowing that the very test they help provide could have saved the life of the person they loved.”
A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “Our thoughts remain with the family of Robert Rowan following his tragic death. The UK National Screening Committee is currently examining the evidence for screening for risks of sudden cardiac death and will open a public consultation on this in due course.”