Earlier this month The Lancet – a peer-reviewed medical journal – featured an article focusing on RHD, entitled ‘Tackling Rheumatic Heart Disease in Indigenous Australians’.

In the article author Sophie Cousins emphasises the huge inequity associated with RHD, referencing stark statistics produced by Australia’s Menzies School of Health Research : ‘in disadvantaged communities, people are up to eight times more likely than other groups to be admitted to hospital and nearly 20 times more likely to die from RHD’.

She notes some of the primordial factors that contribute to RHD such as overcrowding, and a ‘lack of knowledge about the association between hygiene and health’.

Cousins also draws attention to the challenges in dealing with acute rheumatic fever (ARF) – high turnover of staff in rural communities, the lack of a single diagnostic for ARF and patients not presenting for treatment.

Professor Jonathan Carapetis – head of the Telethon Kids Institue and co-director of RhEACH – underlines that tackling RHD is an issue of equity : "if you want to ‘close the gap’, then this is the disease we have to combat".

However he also stresses that there is cause for optimism : "it’s time we started talking about eliminating the disease. It will take a generation, but we should be able to do it."

You can access the article abstract here.