Welcoming his grandchildren for a noisy birthday celebration at his home in Muirhead, Calum Telfer is a happy statistic. Nine years ago he was washing his car in preparation for a funeral when he suffered a completely unexpected heart attack.

He can now admit cheerfully: ''It was nearly my own funeral,'' acknowledging his good fortune in having a daughter who was a cardiac nurse who ensured help was summoned quickly. ''I was in hospital hooked up to a drip within an hour,'' says the 70-year-old embodiment

of one of the country's best health statistics: death from heart disease

is falling fast.

John Reid, the health secretary, said this week that deaths from heart attacks in people under the age of 65 would be ''almost nil'' by 2013 if the downward trend in heart deaths in both men and women continued. Almost nil became absolutely nil in the opportunity for headlines proclaiming fatal heart attacks will end in nine years.

The idea that a continued decline is a straight-line progression which ends in nought is ''a bit naive'', according to Professor Hugh Tunstall-Pedoe, director of the cardiovascular epidemiology unit at Dundee University. Such headlines nevertheless give him a thrill of pleasure, because when targets were first set by a Conservative government in 1991, he

suggested that they were not ambitious enough.

Overall deaths from coronary heart disease in Scotland have fallen by 29% in the past 20 years, from 17,885 in 1980 to 11,692 in 2002. The target is that deaths in the under-75s should halve between 1995 and 2010.

In the UK as a whole between 1978 and 2002, death rates from coronary heart disease for men aged 35-74 have dropped from 578 per 100,000 population to 199. In England, the drop was from 523 to 192 and in Scotland from 656 to 246. In other words, the likelihood of suffering premature death due to a heart attack is still higher in Scotland; however, we

started from a much higher base rate.

The news from north of the border mirrors that contained in the English report, Winning the War on Heart Disease, which suggested that death from premature heart attacks would be consigned to history. It is good news here, too, which is delighting both those who have been dealing with the distress of coronary heart disease and those who have been campaigning for people to live healthier lives.

Dr Alan Faichney, chairman of cardiac services for the North Glasgow University Hospitals Trust, while dismissing as ''totally unrealistic'' the idea that premature deaths from heart attacks would end, says he and his colleagues have seen waiting times drop dramatically and are now operating on older, sicker patients.

He is hopeful that the trend

away from major coronary bypass operations may be a result not

just of the availability of a wider range of angioplasty and stent techniques, but of the effects of health education.

''There are fewer people coming forward for intervention surgery and that may be because they are eating more fruit and leading healthier lifestyles. I don't know that we are seeing this across the board and my gut feeling is that we still have a long way to go, but I think we are prob-ably beginning to see the signs of change such as the decline in smoking,'' he suggests.

Waiting times continue to be cut. The national maximum waiting

time guarantee for coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery is being reduced from 24 weeks to 18 weeks, a target hospital trusts will have to meet by the end of June this year. By the end of this year, the maximum wait for angiography should be eight weeks from seeing a specialist.

John Reid used the publication of the English report to announce a (pounds) 1m project to look into providing a 24-hour angioplasty service so that patients would have the operation to insert a balloon into an artery soon after arriving in hospital, rather than in a matter of weeks. According to Dr Faichney, that now happens fairly commonly rather than patients being sent home and returning some weeks later. ''To provide a 24-hour service requires a lot of staff and you would have to question whether it would not be better just to wait a few hours until the morning.''

The absorption of the Golden Jubilee National Hospital in Clydebank into the NHS has provided extra capacity for patients who would otherwise wait longer for operations in Glasgow at the Royal or Western infirmaries. The continuing under-use of its facilities has given rise to the suggestion by clinicians that it should become a centre of excellence for the west of Scotland. ''It might help to rationalise services because at the moment we have two specialist centres three miles apart. Ideally, you would not site it in Clydebank, but you should not look a gift horse in the mouth,'' says Dr Faichney.

His typical day-to-day experience

reinforces the idea that the middle classes are eating more fruit and vegetables, while people from more deprived areas are not yet putting all the recommendations into practice.

So the idea that early death from a heart attack is less of a threat than it used to be is one that worries the British Heart Foundation. Peter Hollins, its director-general, warns that the good news could lead to a dangerous complacency. ''This ignores the ticking time-bombs of obesity and growing inactivity which could halt the decline of heart disease. These major risk factors for heart disease must not be ignored. Neither the public, the medical

community or the government can afford to become complacent about heart health.

''Although coronary heart disease in the under-65s is on the decline, we are living for longer and more of us suffer the burden of other forms of heart disease such as heart failure, which currently affects more than 650,000 people in the UK,'' he says.

Others who specialise in taking the facts to the people that ordinary advertising does not reach say

that such good news can only reinforce the positive message. Martin Raymond, deputy director of programmes for Health Scotland

(formerly the health education board for Scotland) says: ''This is very positive. We have further to go than other countries, but this shows

people that they can make a difference and things can change.

''There is a strong strand of fatalism in Scotland, where people say, 'We're the worst country in Europe for coronary disease - if you're going to die anyway, what's the point in worrying about it?' Over the past few years we have seen a change in that, first of all in relation to cancer, but now across wider health issues.''

Where once it was fairly common for men to die in their 60s, there is now an expectation that they can look forward to 15 years in which to enjoy retirement and the dramatic idea that people under 65 will no longer die of heart attacks is very positive because it reinforces that idea. ''Of course we cannot be complacent. Obesity is a problem and it is particularly worrying that it is affecting

children and young people because that is storing up problems for the future. However, smoking rates have declined dramatically since the 1970s, when nearly 50% of Scots smoked - now it's 25%-30%. Teenage smoking rates have dropped - particularly for boys, but have reached a plateau for girls, which is worrying because the younger they start, the more likely they are to become addicted.''

Even so, with rates of lung cancer and heart disease both declining rapidly, he remains upbeat. The extensive research carried out by Health Scotland all points in the same direction. ''Over the past 10 years we have seen a real change in attitude, from a stoic acceptance of dying young in some places to the idea that individuals can shape their own health,'' added Raymond.

That is echoed to the full by Calum Telfer, who has enjoyed nine years of relatively healthy retirement since his heart attack. Once that was an achievement - today it is the norm. He recalls: ''The first time you go to rehabilitation class, you just watch others and I realised that these were people within 12 weeks of a heart attack doing things I had not done for years, like skipping and weights. That was a boost in itself.'' Since then he has started running exercise

classes for those keen to continue beyond their 12-week course.

He represents the future, while Bob Crilly, also a survivor of nine years since a quadruple heart bypass for severe angina when he was only 58, represents the statistics which are declining. ''I used to smoke 60 or 70 a day, mainly because I was a rep in the licensed trade and that was the way business was conducted. I smoked my last cigarette the day before my operation and I try to be healthy in other ways,'' he says. The message was delivered in a particularly severe way, but is now being spread among his many friends, not least during regular exercise on the golf course.

The most convincing doctors are those who practise what they preach. So take note that Professor Tunstall-Pedoe, who has spent the past 20 years comparing Scotland's progress in cardiovascular disease with other countries, is training for the London marathon - appropriately confident that although we have a long way to go, we are making progress.