Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent steps his Department has taken to increase awareness of the symptoms of heart valve disease.

Cardiovascular disease (CVD), which includes heart valve disease, is one of the key priorities for the Health Innovation Network, comprising of 15 organisations across England that operate as the innovation arm of the National Health Service. The network is committed to supporting the development of innovations across CVD clinical pathways to make high impact changes to population health.

An ambition of NHS England’s Long Term Plan (LTP) is to raise awareness of the symptoms of heart failure and to ensure early and rapid access to diagnostic tests and treatment, setting out that by 2023/24, 54,000 additional people with heart failure and heart vascular disease will be detected and diagnosed in the community. The LTP also sets out that people with heart failure and heart vascular disease will be better supported by multi-disciplinary teams as part of Primary Care Networks, and that from July 2019, all patients in England have been covered by a Primary Care Network.