HEART attack victims in North Yorkshire will receive faster treatment thanks to a £476,600 grant to pay for state-of-the-art ambulance equipment.

All Tees East and North Yorkshire Trust ambulances will be fitted out with electrocardiogram machines to enable paramedics to diagnose how serious the heart attack is.

The information can then be transmitted back to a hospital's accident and emergency department, so doctors and nurses can prepare treatment.

The Department of Health cash, which was announced today, will also provide ambulance paramedics with life-saving thrombolytic "clotbuster" drugs.

And they will be given extra training in both diagnosis of heart attacks and in the use of the new equipment and drugs.

The cash allocation to the ambulance service NHS Trust is a slice of £14 million set aside by the Department of Health to equip every front line ambulance.

Health minister Hazel Blears said 3,000 lives would be saved every year if patients received thrombolysis one hour more quickly.

She said: "This is an excellent example of how the new investment being made by the Government can be matched with reforms in the way emergency

care is carried out to improve the NHS for the benefits of patients and staff."

Updated: 11:13 Tuesday, May 21, 2002