HEART patients in the region have been given £7m help amid reports that the tide is turning in the war against Britain's biggest killer.

The Government has announced it is investing the money to extend the regional cardiothoracic unit, at the Freeman Hospital, Newcastle.

The announcement came on the day that Health Secretary Dr John Reid announced a dramatic fall in heart deaths, which he said was without parallel anywhere else in the world.

Dr Reid also announced plans to provide a 24-hour angioplasty service (where arteries are unblocked) to save more lives.

Freeman chief executive, Len Fenwick, said: "This will mean we will be able to increase the number of heart procedures, from bypass surgery to angioplasty by around 700 a year."

It should take the total up from 2,300 to 3,000 a year.

Dr Reid and Heart Tsar Dr Roger Boyle have published their progress report since the introduction four years ago of the national service framework for heart disease.

Dr Boyle said if the fall in heart deaths in both men and women continued, fatalities among under-65s could be almost zero by about 2012.

Figures from the report showed that more than 90 men per 100,000 died of heart disease in 1990. By 2000 this figure had dropped to about 50.

Deaths among women also showed a steady decline, from about 25 per 100,000 in 1990 to about ten in 2000.

The report showed that eight out of ten heart attack patients received clot-busting drugs within 30 minutes of arriving at hospital last year, compared with less than four in ten in 2000.

It is expected that, by the end of the month, no heart patients will have to wait more than six months for an operation, compared with the 2,700 who were waiting that long in 2002.

In South Durham, Teesside and North Yorkshire, the average wait for a bypass operation has dropped to four months, from 18 months a few years ago.