A TOP health chief visited the Bradford district yesterday to hear about the life-changing work being carried out as part of the district's Healthy Hearts campaign.

The campaign, set up by the Bradford District Clinical Commissioning Group, has just celebrated its first anniversary of reducing the rate of cardiovascular disease among its patients.

Heart disease is currently Bradford's biggest killer, and thanks to the hard work of the campaign, the number of people under 75 dying from heart problems fell by a third in 2015.

Professor Huon Gray, clinical director for heart disease at NHS England and also a leading cardiologist, visited Hollins Hall Hotel, in Baildon, to attend a presentation set up by the Healthy Hearts campaign to showcase its achievements in the past 12 months and hear how its ideas could benefit other CCGs across the country.

Professor Gray, who is based in Southampton, said that the rest of the country could learn a lot from the work that has been taking place in Bradford.

He said: "Bradford is leading the way in finding ways of reducing the consequences of cardiovascular disease; they have done great work and I am very aware of their success.

"I am particularly interested to learn what lessons the rest of the country can learn from the work being done here in Bradford."

In the last year the Healthy Hearts campaign has focused on reducing heart attacks and strokes, and one way they tackled this issue was be transforming the provision of statins - drugs which help lower cholesterol.

Around 260 people in Bradford have a stroke each year, and the new programme can prevent 80 of them, which saves the CCG £900,000 and would free up 2,160 hospital bed days each year.

If the Bradford system was rolled out nationwide, 22,000 strokes could be prevented in the next 18 months, saving £200 million and freeing up half a million hospital bed days per year.

Dr Chris Harris, a GP and a clinical lead at the CCG, said: "We have had a very successful year with the campaign, helping over 17,000 people in the Bradford district, and we were delighted to invite Professor Gray to hear about Healthy Hearts.

"He has been great and very supportive ever since we started our ambitious programme and he was keen to come and see how we have progressed and we wanted to impress him with our achievements."

Following the success of Healthy Hearts' first year, Dr Harris and his team will be switching their focus from preventing heart attacks and strokes to try and tackle the issue of high blood pressure, which affects an estimated 50,000 people in Bradford.

To learn more about how to keep your heart healthy, visit the campaign's website www.bradfordshealthyhearts.co.uk