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Economic cost of heart disease

Heart disease costs the UK economy £29 billion a year, according to a study by the Health Economics Research Centre at Oxford University, and published in medical journal 'Heart' in summer 2006. Their figure of £29 billion includes the economic burden of informal care for people with CVD by their relatives.

Britain spends more of its health budget on heart disease than any other EU country the study suggests. The Health Economics Research Centre based its findings on UK residents diagnosed with cardiovascular disease in 2004.

They calculated the costs from:

The breakdown of the bill was approximately:

The study shows the scale of the public health problem CVD poses to the UK in terms of economic burden.

Visit: http://heart.bmjjournals.com/
'Heart' is a subscription based peer reviewed journal for health professionals.