Heart disease hitting people at younger age

Babyboomers and subsequent generations are dying younger of heart disease and at a faster rate than their parents.

Research about to be published in the New Zealand Medical Journal shows the previous downward trend in heart disease mortality is flattening out and may be about to rise.

"When you compare the numbers in relatively young and early middle-aged people, deaths may be increasing compared with former generations," said Heart Foundation medical director Norman Sharpe.

Higher mortality rates were beginning to show up in people born in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s and were almost certainly due to a rise in obesity and diabetes, he said.

The findings tie in with research published last month that showed more people overall were arriving at hospitals with heart attacks. Of most concern were significant increases in men and women in the 25 to 44 age group, and among Maori and Pacific Islanders.

The foundation and the Cardiac Society are jointly calling on the Government to improve planning and resources for clinical care of heart patients.

Professor Sharpe said there were concerns that the quality of cardiac services nationwide was patchy - meaning some patients were waiting for unacceptably long periods for angioplasty and surgery.

He is also worried about wide socio-economic and ethnic disparities in heart health risk, access to services and results.

Also lobbying the Government is Fight the Obesity Epidemic, which is launching a petition today asking Parliament to take action to combat obesity, and its associated health problems such as type 2 diabetes, in children.

Specifically, the petition seeks legislation to prevent the sale in schools of food and drink that are high in sugar, fat or salt, and to ban advertisements of the same low nutritional food and drink during children's TV programmes.

It also wants a parliamentary inquiry into other actions needed to prevent obesity.

Spokeswoman Robyn Toomath said education alone was largely ineffective in promoting the anti-obesity message.

So was marketing unless campaigns had multimillion-dollar budgets like the food manufacturers.