A weekly programme which focuses on people and the situations which shape their lives
Reporters: Jim Douglas Henry, Jeremy James, Jeanne La Chard, Gillian Strickland, Desmond Wilcox, Harold Williamson

This week: Heart Attack: 1: U.S.A.
A third of the people who die in this country in the next twelve months will be killed by some form of heart failure or heart disease-200,000 men and women. The heart attack has become this country's biggest premature killer. More than cancer, bronchitis, and the other killers which we fear, death from heart failure is really the one we should consider now.
It's the same story in all countries like ours where the pace takes its toll on the individual. In the United States more than a million and a half Americans will suffer a heart attack in the next twelve months. Six hundred thousand of them will die one a minute around the clock. Now there is hope that this toll can be reduced. New forms of treatment, if rushed into use immediately after the first attack, can save lives. In the States they are pioneering these new methods. But in this country we're not far behind (indeed, in some respects we may even be ahead). In two programmes Man Alive looks first at the situation in America.
(Colour)