Heart disease is expected to cost £15bn by the end of 2014 with billions wiped from British productivity, a new study has suggested. Britain’s healthcare system will see that cost rise 22% to £18.3bn by 2020, the research produced by the Centre for Economic and Business Research (CEBR) said. The study, commissioned by pharmaceuticals giant AstraZeneca, also indicates that the cost to business of the disease afflicting working-age people is also significant. Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the biggest killer of men in the UK and the second biggest for women – after dementia and Alzheimer’s disease – according to the Office for National Statistics. CVD is related to heart attacks and strokes and can affect people of all ages.
The study said 194,239 lives have been lost to the disease this year, with more than 20,000 among the working age. The CEBR said CVD will have caused a total of 1.1 million deaths across six European countries it looked at, costing their economies a total of £81.2bn. The research examined the disease in the UK, France, Italy, Germany, Spain and Sweden. It said that the figure is the equivalent to the GDP of a mid-sized European economy, such as Hungary. For full story visit the sky news website
