A FREE NHS Health Check scheme is to be scrapped in St Helens after only 36 per cent of those eligible participated.

A report by Medicspot revealed just over a third of people able to access a health check in the borough underwent one.

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The report compares regional NHS data on the take-up of Health Checks, or 'Health MOTs' a free service offered by the NHS to everyone aged 40 to 74 to prevent premature death from heart disease, stroke, kidney disease and type two diabetes.

St Helens was named in the report as among the least proactive places in England when it comes to health due to the low number of people who took part in the scheme over the last five years.

The government has announced it plans to replace the scheme with a digital version that makes use of technology to save people needing to book face-to-face appointments with their GP.

Out of the 54,093 eligible people in St. Helens, 34,051 of them (almost 63 per cent) were offered a free NHS Health Check between 2014 and 2019.

Of these 19,404 in the town (almost 57 per cent of those offered and just less than 36 per cent of all those eligible) took up the offer and received a Health Check.

Neighbouring Knowsley saw 45 per cent of all those eligible have a check. In Wigan the figure was almost 41 per cent.

Dr Johnson D’souza, Medical Director and GP at Medicspot, said: “People aged 40 to 74 who don’t get a Health Check every five years are at an increased risk of undetected cardiovascular disease.”

“By checking your blood pressure, lifestyle, family history, height and weight, we can get an idea of your risk of getting certain illnesses including heart disease, stroke and diabetes,” explains D’souza.

“It is very worrying that only 36 per cent of people who were eligible for a free NHS Health Check in St Helens took up the offer."

In June, researchers revealed free NHS checks reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease. The study found that over a six-year period, participants of the Health Check programme had lost weight, lowered blood pressure and fewer were smokers.

Officials are yet to provide precise details of what the revamped Health Checks will look like in St Helens, but they said they would harness ‘the latest technology, techniques, and data’ and would include factors ‘that could include their age, where they live and their DNA’ to personalise health checks.

Despite the planned overhaul, people in St. Helens who are aged 40–70 can still get a Health Check from their GP or pharmacist. This would usually involve receiving a letter from a GP or local authority as an invite for a Health Check. However, people can also request one by contacting St Helens Council for more information.

The Patients Association has welcomed a potentially "more personalised approach" but has insisted it must meet people's genuine needs.

John Kell, head of policy at the Patients Association, said: “A more personalised approach to prevention that looks at individual patient needs is to be welcomed. Whether this review will achieve this will depend entirely on what it recommends. Public health and preventative measures remain disgracefully under-funded, being excluded from both Theresa May’s commitment of new funding last year and Boris Johnson’s much more modest funding pledge recently.

“The temptation for the Government to find a way to provide these population-wide health checks on the cheap, by finding a rationale for calling fewer patients in, must be tremendous – we hope they will resist it, and come up with a genuinely effective, evidence-led approach that really meets people’s needs. It’s vital that patients are fully involved at every stage of this review, and we look forward to hearing from the Secretary of State how he will ensure this.”