THERE is an excess of 3000 people who are living with rheumatic heart disease (RHD) in Fiji from 2007 so far.
This was confirmed by CWM Hospital’s head of pediatrics and consultant Dr Joseph Kado yesterday.
Dr Kado said the Rheumatic Heart Disease Control had a database of persons living with RHD and it recorded an excess of 2400 cases.
“The control program started in 2007 but even today we are finding that some patients are known to some of our medical facilities but are not on our database,” Dr Kado said.
“So part of our research is trying to get all those numbers on our database. So we would estimate that there is easily an excess of 3000 people living with RHD from 2007.
“Looking back, some of those are lost to follow up. They have had the disease and they have taken it for granted and they don’t access the service. And when they actually have a problem and report it, then we pick them up again and put them into our database.”
