Widow encourages people to get their heart checked

Joanna Clark's husband Matthew died aged 46

A widow from Surrey has encouraged people to "ask for help before it's too late" after losing her husband to a heart attack at the age of 46.

Joanna Clark, from Guildford, lost "fit and healthy" husband Matthew in January 2023.

She said: "Ask for help before it's too late, and I say this because I wish my husband had done that."

The mother-of-two added: "The consequences of when we don't go to the doctors, or when we wait, or when we feel it's not appropriate, or we think it's nothing to worry about, that's when we do lose people too early."

In Surrey in 2023, heart and circulatory diseases caused 217 deaths in people aged between 20 and 64, which was a 10% rise in five years, according to the British Heart Foundation (BHF).

The charity said since 2020 in Surrey there had also been a 33% rise in the number of people diagnosed with heart failure and a 11% rise in the number of people diagnosed with atrial fibrillation - a type of heart rhythm problem.

There had also been a concerning rise in the number of under-65s dying from heart problems since 2020, which was the first sustained increase in at least a generation, the BHF added.

Ms Clark encouraged anybody who was concerned about their heart to "not even wait a minute" to get checked.

She said: "I think personally not many people want to get checked, even they think 'oh, it's probably nothing'.

"We have this sort of mentality where we don't want to take time from someone who can help us.

"We know everybody is busy, we know the NHS is under great pressure."

The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) said: "We are tackling the root causes of cardiovascular conditions by clamping down on smoking and obesity, as part of our Plan for Change to shift care from sickness to prevention.

"We are also delivering more tests and scans in the community alongside greater use of technology to help people manage their conditions closer to home and reduce hospital admissions."