The National Assembly adopted on Monday July 20 a bill aimed at better combating cardiovascular diseases, the second cause of death in France after cancer, through various measures, including preventive screening.
Adopted unanimously by 462 votes to 0, this text carried by LR MP and former Minister of Health Yannick Neuder aims to provide France with a “national strategy to combat cardio-neurovascular diseases”, responsible each year for 140,000 deaths and 1.2 million hospitalizations, while “80% of them could be avoided”, according to a press release from the elected official. Already examined in the Senate, this text resulting from a joint committee has now been definitively adopted by Parliament.
To better prevent these diseases and their associated complications – heart attack, stroke -, which represent the leading cause of acquired disability in France, this law notably establishes “screening for cardio-neuro-vascular diseases” during preventive medical appointments, with awareness “of risk factors”, such as tobacco, alcohol, a sedentary lifestyle or even obesity.
It also introduces measures specific to certain categories of the population, such as taking into account, in women, for whom stroke is the leading cause of death, “determinants specific to their cardio-neuro-vascular risk, too often diagnosed and treated too late”, according to Mr. Neuder.
An “early screening” appointment is planned for children from the age of six, in particular to detect familial hypercholesterolemia, a “genetic disease which affects one in 250 people and remains massively underdiagnosed”.
Leading cause of death in the world
The text also authorizes pharmacists and physiotherapists to measure blood pressure “as part of a prevention approach, while millions of French people are hypertensive without knowing it”.
“As a cardiologist, I still see patients every week who arrive too late. (…) We can ensure that they arrive sooner,” declared Yannick Neuder on Monday before the vote of the deputies, emphasizing the need, after this “first step”, for “a prevention programming law because an annual budget will never finance an investment whose return is measured over ten years. »
The leading cause of death in the world, cardiovascular diseases are responsible for more than one in five deaths in France. A stroke occurs there on average every four minutes, affecting 120,000 people each year and causing the death of nearly 30,000 of them.
