Monday 27 June 2022 11:39 PM People care more about POT HOLES than heart failure - despite disease killing ... trends now
Heart failure receives less public attention than potholes despite affecting nearly one million Britons, scientists say.
Researchers at Lancaster University studied more than 2billion words from books, social media and parliamentary speeches.
When looking at politicians' words in particular, they found potholes were mentioned 37 times more often than 'heart failure'.
This is despite heart failure costing the NHS £2billion a year and being one of the country's biggest killers.
For comparison, around 20,000 drivers in England and Wales broke down because of potholes in 2021. Councils filled in 1.7million cracks last year, at a cost of less than £100million.
The researchers, led by Dr Jane Demmen, acknowledged that torn up roads cause frustration and inconvenience as well as 'some threat to health and quality of life'.
But they said potholes are 'arguably less important and urgent' than heart failure.
The team called for 'major efforts' to boost the profile of heart failure to ensure it gets 'equal billing' with conditions such as cancer in health policy and future investment.
Researchers at Lancaster University studied more than 2billion words from books, social media and parliamentary speeches. They found that potholes were mentioned 37 times more often than 'heart failure
The graph shows the number of times 'heart failure' (red line) and 'potholes' (green line) were mentioned in parliamentary debates between January 1945 and February 2021 per million words
The graph shows the number of times 'heart failure' (red line), 'cancer' (green line) and 'dementia' (blue line) were mentioned in UK parliamentary debates between January 1945 and February 2021 per million words
