Dr Mohammed Al-Kebsi and his team at the Ministry of Health in Yemen, with support from the World Health Organization, have held workshops on rheumatic heart disease in different cities throughout the country.

Dr Al-Kebsi is a consultant interventional cardiologist and Assistant Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine at Sana’a University. He also acts as national coordinator of NCDs in the Yemeni Ministry of Health and as the director of the Cardiac Center at Al-Thawrah, the principal referral hospital in Yemen.

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Audience members at the Rheumatic Fever and Rheumatic Heart Disease Prevention Symposium in Sana’a, Yemen

More recently Dr Al-Kebsi and his team have focused on secondary RHD prevention, as large numbers of patients in Yemen were presenting with advanced rheumatic heart disease, and therefore required expensive, valve surgery. They hope to improve this situation with a hospital-based rheumatic heart disease registry, an initiative which forms part of the global REMEDY study. Collection of data for this registry is ongoing.

The REMEDY study is a prospective, international, multicentre, hospital-based registry, and aims to provide comprehensive, contemporary data on patients with RHD and to help to develop strategies to prevent and manage RHD and its complications.

For more information on the effectiveness of RHD registries, read our page on RHD control here.