Conservatives call for heart screening programme for youngsters
It follows the death of Edinburgh footballer Jamie Skinner
The Scottish Government is being urged to create a national heart screening programme for young athletes to prevent further deaths.
The Conservatives are calling for a Scotland-wide scheme to be set up following the death of 13-year-old Jamie Skinner.
The teenager suffered a heart attack while playing at Tynecastle Football Club in 2013.
In the wake of the tragedy, the Jamie Skinner Foundation campaigned to install a defibrillator in every secondary school and sports centre in Edinburgh. Miles Briggs, Scottish Conservative shadow minister for public health, is now calling on the Scottish Government to take action and ensure electrocardiogram (ECG) tests are available at schools or sports clubs to investigate heart health.
He said: The Jamie Skinner Foundation have led the way and I congratulate them on their work which has to date seen ÂŁ40,000 spent on community defibrillators. The next step towards preventing the death of other young sports stars is the introduction of a national heart screening programme for young athletes in Scotland.
Scotland can lead in this area by delivering a comprehensive screening programme for all young people. The ECG test is painless, non-invasive and takes only a few minutes to perform. The scan looks at the electrical conduction pathways around the heart and is then evaluated by a cardiologist.
I believe the time has come to bring forward new ideas to address this and many other issues and for the next Scottish Parliament to take steps to put in place the best practice - a national youth screening programme would help to find any heart defects in young Scots before they cost lives.
Insisting that all children are given an electrocardiogram test either at school or at their local sports club could help identify those who are at risk.''