A Swansea campaigner for cardiac screening for young people is angry over delays in service improvements in Wales.
Paulette Smith warned red tape could result in youngsters dying unnecessarily from hidden heart defects.
Paulette, from Heol-y-Ffin in Clydach, was one of a team of UK-wide crusaders who last year took part in a postcard campaign aimed at lobbying MPs to ensure guidelines over hidden heart defects were inserted in the new national service framework on coronary heart disease.
Her pressure group, Cardiac Risk in the Young, or CRY, successfully got a chapter included on sudden death syndrome with guidelines on improving screening.
But now it has emerged that Wales has been left out because the Assembly has not yet agreed it.
CRY chief executive Alison Cox is frustrated that few English health trusts have yet to start to implement a new strategy based on the chapter eight guidelines, a year on.
But Wales hasn’t even got off the starting blocks.
Paulette, who lost her son Christiaan to the condition when he was just 24, said: “I am just so angry about this. Gower MP Martin Caton was a big supporter of ours, yet it turns out the framework doesn’t apply to Wales. We seem to be constantly hitting brick walls and having stumbling blocks put in front of us.”
She added: “While it’s too late for my family, there are many other young people who could be saved if this new advice was followed in Wales. Young lives are now being put at risk.”
Ironically, one of the cardiologists who helped brief the UK Government on the new chapter works at Singleton Hospital.
Mark Anderson warned there were many young people who were living with an undiagnosed time bomb, Swansea GP Peter Edwards, medical director of Swansea Board, said: “Chapter eight relating to children has not yet been issued in Wales, and is therefore only applicable in England at this time.
“The Assembly is considering the recommendations of the chapter prior to its release here.”
Around eight apparently fit and healthy people under the age of 35 drop dead from undiagnosed heart rhythm defects each week in the UK.
