Thousands of people in Huddersfield are not receiving treatment despite having a serious heart condition.

Huddersfield MP Barry Sheerman revealed in the Commons that more than 3,000 people in the town who have been diagnosed with atrial fibrillation are not being given anti-coagulant drugs.

And he claimed in a Westminster debate that cost was a prime reason.

The condition is often a prime contributor to strokes and Mr Sheerman said it was a scandal that more was not being done to prevent them.

Health secretary Daniel Poulter agreed to write to NHS England, which oversees Clinical Commissioning Groups, to issue new guiedleines

Mr Poulter said: “It is our job to raise legitimate concerns about care for AF or any other health conditions. We must do our best, as stewards of the health system, to push for good local commissioning that is mindful of best practice.

“I have already committed to writing to NHS England to ensure that it puts the matter high on its priority list, and that it supports and encourages all clinical commissioning groups to take AF seriously and make it a priority across the country.”

The move was welcomed by Mr Sheerman, who has close knowledge of the condition as his wife Pamela suffers from AF.

He said: “It is a scandal that 8.5% of atrial fibrillation patients are not receiving treatment, 35% are receiving aspirin, and only 56.9% are receiving oral anti-coagulation treatment.

“What is more, we now have three drugs that could be prescribed. We should be saying, “Isn’t it wonderful? We’ve had a breakthrough!” I hope that I can pronounce them properly—they are dabigatran, rivaroxaban and apixaban. However, compared to the 3p that it costs for a dose of warfarin, they are more expensive—I have seen an estimate that treatment would cost around £800 a year.

“That might be considered an excessive cost compared to the tiny amount that warfarin costs, but strokes cost this country £2.5 billion a year. If we really want to wreck the national health service, we should treat people with AF properly. They will have a stroke and end up in long-term care, making great use of hospital beds and highly qualified medical staff. Such a burden on the health service could be avoided.

“The third barrier is the clinical commissioning groups. There is no doubt that the clinical commissioning groups are a barrier to this spending. These are relatively new drugs. They were approved by NICE about 18 months ago and NICE said that by now it would expect about 20% of AF sufferers to be on the new anti-coagulants, but only 3.4% of sufferers are on them. Even NICE, projecting forward, thought that the figure would already be 20%.

“It is a national scandal that people are dying today, are dying every day and are having incapacitating strokes, and that that is costing the national health service an enormous amount of money and requiring the use of an enormous amount of expertise. It is a burden on the national health service that should not be there”.

Click here to take you back to more Huddersfield news.

Want to read, watch and hear more? You can download the FREE Examiner Apple App here, the FREE Examiner Android App here or you can view the paper as an e-edition on your Apple, Android or Kindle device by clicking here

To follow us on Twitter click here