Free blood-pressure checks in barber shops

The NHS is expanding its connection of escaped blood-pressure checks successful the assemblage successful England to see immoderate barber shops and mosques arsenic good arsenic pharmacies.

It is portion of a thrust to dainty much radical with risky but undiagnosed precocious humor pressure.

Experts anticipation making the checks disposable successful much settings - not conscionable GP surgeries - volition help.

High humor unit increases the hazard of a bosom onslaught oregon stroke.

But the symptoms are not ever obvious.

High Street pharmacies delivered 149,865 blood-pressure checks to over-40s successful May, up from 58,345 the twelvemonth before.

And caller funding, nether the primary-care entree betterment plan, volition spot a further 2.5 cardinal blood-pressure checks successful assemblage pharmacies, estimated to forestall much than 1,350 bosom attacks and strokes each year.

Chief pharmaceutical serviceman for England David Webb said: "The tremendous enlargement successful the fig of blood-pressure checks delivered implicit the past twelvemonth is acknowledgment to the hard enactment of assemblage pharmacies, which person much than doubled the fig of humor unit checks delivered, and the innovation of section teams, going into the bosom of communities, with mobile sites that tin sojourn places similar barber's shops and dominoes clubs.

"With the fig of radical surviving with large illnesses, including bosom illness and different cardiovascular conditions, acceptable to turn substantially implicit the coming years, it has ne'er been much important to enactment successful spot preventative measures similar casual to entree blood-pressure checks that tin prime up the aboriginal signs and risks."

John Maingay, from the British Heart Foundation, urged radical to instrumentality up the section checks, saying: "It's quick, casual and could assistance prevention your life."

And GPs successful Warrington are adjacent offering location checks via an app.