In Béthune, a bus to raise awareness among women about cardiac distress

Pascale Ngah Noa finishes her cardiovascular screening course and tears flow. This 44-year-old Cameroonian can’t believe it. “I was received by people who were so attentive, I felt respected! » She is one of thirteen thousand five hundred women to have benefited from this medical examination, thanks to the Women’s Heart Bus which has been traveling across France since 2021.

This Thursday in September, the forty-eighth stage, he made a stop at the Place de la République, in Béthune, in Pas-de-Calais. A little village festival feel, stands decked out in bright pink, chairs to sit on; there is gentleness in the air despite the crowds rushing to get a consultation. Over three days, three hundred women will follow ten stages of screening, which includes an electrocardiogram and, if necessary, a Doppler ultrasound.

Thanks to its bus, the Agir pour le cœur des femmes foundation intends to both screen and raise awareness. “Ninety percent of women screened on our bus have two vulnerability factors, namely hypertension, risks linked to tobacco, being overweight or diabetes,” worries Claire Mounier-Vehier, professor of cardiology at Lille University Hospital and co-founder of the foundation.

A prevention activist

She deplores the fact that“there has never been a national plan devoted to the heart, although there has been one for obesity, cancer and even Lyme disease.” Above all, she notes that women are poorly aware of the specifically female warning signs of heart attack, which are different and less perceptible than those of men. “When a woman collapses in the street, we immediately think of vagal discomfort. But, when it’s a man, we immediately have the reflex to give him a cardiac massage.” observes the cardiologist, tireless campaigner for prevention.

The screenings organized by the bus made it possible to collect nearly two hundred data relating to the health and lifestyle of women. Analyzed by the National Observatory of Women’s Health at Lille University Hospital, they result in edifying statistics: “Eighty-one percent of women care more about the health of their loved ones than their own. And less than a third of them listen to the signals from their bodies,” alarms Thierry Drilhon, co-founder of the association.

It is not Nathalie Pruvost who will say the opposite. At 60, she works with her heating engineer husband and rarely has time to take care of herself. She took advantage of the bus coming: “I had never seen a cardiologist. I am aware of the risks, but there is always something else to do…”

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