NZ leading the way on heart and diabetes checks

NZ leading the way on heart and diabetes checks

New Zealand’s health sector should pat itself on the back for reaching a major milestone in the fight to reduce our country’s high rates of cardiovascular disease, says the Heart Foundation.

The Government today announced its National Health Target results for the July-September quarter, showing 90% of the eligible population has now been risk assessed for cardiovascular disease (CVD).

Heart Foundation Medical Director Gerry Devlin says reaching the target is a huge achievement for New Zealand and one the health sector should feel incredibly proud of.

“Congratulations to GPs, nurses and other health care workers for their hard work checking the hearts of more than 1.2 million people. This is a world-leading achievement for New Zealand.

“Death rates from heart disease in New Zealand are 18% above the OECD average so it’s encouraging to see strong steps taken to address this.”

Waikato GP Fraser Hamilton, who also works for the Heart Foundation, says sustaining the level of assessments at 90% should be much easier than achieving it.

“In the period GP practices have been working to achieve the target, we’ve been carrying out multiple risk assessments each day. Now I only need to do one or two per day to maintain the target and follow up patients appropriately.”

Hamilton says the country still has more work ahead to ensure eligible Māori are risk assessed at the same rate as non-Māori.

“We haven’t met the target for Māori yet. It is our young Māori men who are missing out and they are the people we need to target.”

Reaching the 90% target is a vital step towards preventing CVD (heart disease, stroke and blood vessel disease), which is the biggest cause of death in New Zealand, particularly for Māori and Pasifika.

Devlin says the next step is to actively work on lowering people’s risk, particularly those at high risk.

“There’s obviously been a strong focus on achieving the assessment target but now we need to spend more energy on helping people reduce that risk – to stop smoking, eat healthily, exercise regularly, and if indicated, take their medications.”

This is particularly the case now that the heart and diabetes target will cease to be a Health Target from 1 July next year, and will become a District Health Board monitoring indicator instead.

“If we keep up the current level of effort, while increasing our efforts to help people reduce their risk, we’ll be well on track to addressing New Zealand’s biggest killer and preventing people having heart events and strokes.

“We look forward to that brighter future.”

Heart Health information

Heart disease is New Zealand’s biggest killer. It takes more than one life every 90 minutes. Here are the Heart Foundation’s recommendations to reduce your risk of heart disease:

• Stop smoking – this is the most important thing you can do to reduce your risk of heart disease.

• Have a heart and diabetes check. A regular heart health check is a great way to pick up problems before they become serious. Your GP or practice nurse will be happy to help.

• Know your numbers. Ask your GP to test your cholesterol and blood pressure. If you know your current blood pressure and cholesterol levels, you can estimate your risk of heart disease using www.knowyournumbers.co.nz

• Eat more heart healthy foods. Check out our delicious, healthy recipes on the Heart Foundation website.

• Be active every day. Thirty minutes of moderate physical activity is the goal to aim for.

ENDS

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