A former Ulster rugby star was amongst a group of you people who made use of Northern Ireland's first heart screening clinic as it was launched yesterday.

Gary Longwell joined 10 volunteers from both sporting and non-sporting backgrounds at the University of Ulster's Jordanstown campus clinic, where the new service is to be based. 

The move has been overseen by leading heart charity Cardiac Risk in the Young (CRY).  It will see electrocardiogram (ECG) screening being used to check young people in a bid to help detect signs of Sudden Cardiac Death, or Sudden Arrhythmic Death Syndrome (SADS), a fatal condition that is said to kill eight apparently healthy people every week. 

CRY's Northern Ireland representative, John Lundy, lost his son to a diagnosed heart condition and has since vowed to prevent other families going through the same terrible experience. 

As well as Gary Longwell, he has also managed to secure the support of some of the Province's most famous faces, including former international goalkeeper Pat Jennings and BBC TV presenter Mark Carruthers. 

Speaking at the event yesterday were CRY's chief executive and founder Alison Cox, expert cardiologist Dr Sanjay Sharma, and Caroline Gard, who set up a CRY screening clinic at the Colchester Institute in England after losing her only son, Andy, just two days before his 18th birthday.

Alison explained how she had been propelled to setting up CRY after her own son was diagnosed with SADS and told he must never play tennis again. 

"I thought about how much this seemed to be happening to other tennis players and decided that we must have been able to do something," she said. 

"CRY was set up with four main aims - to raise awareness, to help people identify the condition and look for symptoms, to carry out research, and to offer bereavement support to families." 

Describing yesterday's launch of the screening clinic as a "pivotal moment", she said that it marked a "very important day for CRY in Northern Ireland". 

She added: "It seems absolutely fantastic to me.  the University of Ulster is the perfect location for the clinic because it is accessible, it is well-know, and it is full of young people."