NORTH Yorkshire residents have left more than £1.5 million in gifts to a national charity as bequests in their wills.

These donations are today helping the British Heart Foundation (BHF) fund life saving research into heart and circulatory diseases, including coronary heart disease, vascular dementia, and strokes and their risk factors like type 2 diabetes.

Rebecca Cooke, legacy marketing manager at BHF, said: “Without the amazing individuals who have remembered us in their will, we couldn’t make the medical breakthroughs that have transformed the lives of over 154,000 people in North Yorkshire.”

Gifts in wills fund half of the charities research into cures and treatments for heart and circulatory conditions.

New treatments discovered by BHF funded researchers have helped halve the number of deaths from heart and circulatory diseases over the last 50 years.

But more research is urgently needed as around 7,386 people die from heart and circulatory diseases in the North East of England each year, equivalent to more than 1 in 4 deaths.

To find out more about leaving a gift in your Will to the BHF, visit: bhf.org.uk/wills