The programme will be overseen by a National Heart Director, Dr Roger Boyle, who is chairman of the Speciality Advisory Committee in cardiovascular medicine.

Alan Milburn: Heart disease action plan

Mr Milburn said the government was launching a "national crusade" against heart disease.

He said: "The new blueprint will tackle one of our country's biggest killers.

"CHD kills 110,000 people each year - yet many of these deaths are preventable."

The UK has one of the highest death rates from CHD and stroke in Europe. Poor people are particularly hard hit.

Mr Milburn said this was because heart services in the UK had suffered from years of neglect.

He announced the creation by April 2002 of a network of 100 fast track clinics for people suffering from chest pain.

These clinics will ensure that people suspected of suffering from angina can be assessed by a specialist within two weeks of referral by a GP.

Other measures in the NSF include:

• Community smoking cessation clinics
• GPs to set up registers of at risk patients
• At least 80% of heart attack patients discharged from hospital to be prescribed aspirin, beta-blockers or statins
• Seven hundred defibrillators in public places to help heart attack victims
• Targets to improve ambulance response times for urgent cases so that 75% of category A patients receive a response within eight minutes
• Clot-busting drugs to be made available within one hour of a heart attack victim calling for help

We have huge waiting lists for cardiac surgery so we have to mop that up before we can even start

Jules Dussek, Society of Cardiothoracic Surgeons

Mr Jules Dussek, president of the Society of Cardiothoracic Surgeons, which was consulted prior to publication of the blueprint, warned bringing the UK up to European levels would take time and money.

"You have to bear in mind we have huge waiting lists for cardiac surgery so we have to mop that up before we can even start," he said.

But he said: "If the funding is there, this is a major step forward."