Northern Echo deputy chief photographer Ian Weir was just 38 when he died of a heart attack while waiting for a heart bypass operation in 1999.

The tragic loss sparked colleagues to launch a campaign entitled A Chance to Live which was aimed at reducing hospital waiting times for patients needing heart surgery.

Ten years on, it is credited with having triggered a major expansion in coronary care which has saved hundreds of lives.

Health reporter Barry Nelson, who spearheaded the campaign, looked back at Ian's legacy in a feature published in last Friday's edition of the Echo.

The Darlington-based paper's campaign succeeded partly because of the support of local MP Alan Milburn, a personal friend of Ian's who was also health secretary at the time.

Wrote Barry: "Opinions vary on Alan Milburn’s time as MP for Darlington, but there is no doubt that he dramatically improved treatment for heart patients during his four years as health secretary.

"The catalyst for these dramatic changes, which saw the government plough more than £700m into improving the treatment of heart patients, was the tragic and untimely death Ian Weir.

"Mr Milburn responded to Ian's death by announcing a crash programme to expand the capacity at NHS heart units up and down the country.

"Ten years on, the big push ordered by the Darlington MP has dramatically cut waiting times so that the Northern Echo's target of no-one waiting longer than three months for a heart bypass has been comfortably met."

Writing on his blog, Echo editor Peter Barron revealed that someone recently left a bunch of flowers at a bench in Sunderland which commemorates Ian and two other North-East newspapermen, Sunderland Echo editor Ian Holland and Shields Gazette editor Phil Hickey.

Attached to the flowers was a card saying: "Ian Weir, I never knew you - but because of you, I'm still alive."

Ian's widow Maggie Weir told the Echo it was "a tragedy" that heart surgery in the UK had to reach such a low ebb before it was improved, but congratulated the newspaper for its part in tackling the problem.

"I honestly think the Echo's campaign was the trigger for improvements," she said.