Welcome to the coronary heart disease hotspot of all England

Tameside has the highest proportion of the population dying from coronary heart disease (CHD) across England.

A new campaign launched today by MSD and HEART UK at the cholesterol charity's annual conference highlights a wide geographical variation in the risk of dying from CHD across England.

A North-South divide still exists with the North West having the highest number of deaths from CHD in the country compared to the South Central region which has the lowest CHD mortality rates in the country.

The CHD mortality rate for people in Tameside and Glossop, is almost four times as high as those living in Kensington & Chelsea in London (140.84 vs 36.91 people per 100,000).

Chief Executive of HeartUK, Jules Payne said she was astonished by the figures here: At Heart UK we are absolutely shocked by the rates in Tameside and Glossop. The rate is almost double the national average. What's even more concerning is the gender difference. For males, it's 185.85 with a national average of 111.56, and for women it's 99.93 percent with a national average of 49.75 percent. What we'd like to to is encourage everybody to understand their risk and take action. People don't need to change their lives overnight.

The problem with cardiovascular disease is it is a silent disease and a silent killer.

It does tend to be in the more deprived areas........ Read more on the website of Tameside Radio 103.6FM.



In 1854 Friedrich Engels published his historic work titled The Conditions of the Working Class of England. Below is an excerpt where he describes Stalybridge.

A mile eastward lies Stalybridge, also on the Tame. In coming over the hill from Ashton, the traveller has, at the top, both right and left, fine large gardens with superb villa-like houses in their midst, built usually in the Elizabethan style, which is to the Gothic precisely what the Anglican Church is to the Apostolic Roman Catholic. A hundred paces farther and Stalybridge shows itself in the valley, in sharp contrast with the beautiful country seats, in sharp contrast even with the modest cottages of Ashton!

Stalybridge lies in a narrow, crooked ravine, much narrower even than the valley at Stockport, and both sides of this ravine are occupied by an irregular group of cottages, houses, and mills. On entering, the very first cottages are narrow, smoke-begrimed, old and ruinous; and as the first houses, so the whole town. A few streets lie in the narrow valley bottom, most of them run criss-cross, pell-mell, up hill and down, and in nearly all the houses, by reason of this sloping situation, the ground-floor is half-buried in
the earth; and what multitudes of courts, back lanes, and remote nooks arise out of this confused way of building may be seen from the hills, whence one has the town, here and there, in a bird's-eye view almost at one's feet. Add to this the shocking filth, and the repulsive effect of Stalybridge, in spite of its pretty surroundings, may be readily imagined.

Looking at the high coronary death rate in Tameside in 2011, if Engels were to come back from the grave and once again spend time in Tameside I am sure he would have an interesting footnote to add to his monumental work which undoubtedly would illustrate that despite infinitely better living conditions enjoyed by today’s Tameside working class compared to their Victorian predecessors - in contemporary terms the ground rules remain the same and societies less advantaged inhabitants still die younger from preventable causes. Tameside Citizen