With a far higher proportion of older women in rural areas there is no doubt that this is a serious issue to address in rural settings. This story tells us:
A “heart attack gender gap” is resulting in needless deaths of women because they do not receive the same treatment as men, a charity has warned.
The British Heart Foundation (BHF) has released a new briefing titled “Bias and Biology: How the gender gap in heart disease is costing women’s lives”.
A study funded by the charity and conducted by researchers at the University of Leeds found that, over a 10-year period, more than 8,200 heart attack deaths among women in England and Wales could have been prevented if they had received equal treatment to men, equating to two deaths a day.
The research also showed that women are 50 per cent more likely than men to initially receive an incorrect diagnosis when they are experiencing a heart attack.
The BHF warned that while heart attacks are widely perceived as a “man’s disease”, twice as many women die from coronary heart disease than from breast cancer.