It doesn’t take much imagination to grasp why thousands of women are dying unnecessarily because of a “gender gap” in heart disease, as highlighted in yesterday’s news. All you have to do is think of someone having a heart attack. The chances are the picture in your head will be of a man — probably a portly middle-aged one. In a new report, Bias and Biology, the British Heart Foundation estimates that more than 8,000 women in England and Wales died needlessly after a heart attack in the decade from 2002 to 2013 because they weren’t offered the same standard of care as their male peers. Myriad factors are responsible for this inequality, but public perception is one of the more obvious ones.

Source: The Times September 30, 2019 16:07 UTC