INTRODUCTION

Rheumatic fever (RF) and rheumatic heart disease (RHD) together affect about 15.6 million people worldwide, 2.4 million of whom are children in developing countries. There is a paucity of information on the prevalence of RHD in Africa. In South Africa, anecdotal information suggests that RHD is the leading cause of acquired heart disease in children and young adults.

The absence of contemporary, systematically collected data is a gap needed to be bridged in order to effectively treat patients with RHD in developing countries, where the rate of RF/RHD has not mirrored the decline in developed countries. Experience elsewhere has provided evidence of registers realising notable successes in reducing RF recurrence. We report the development and proposed mechanism for a RHD Registry.

METHODS

We discuss steps involved in developing the global registry: meetings with various stakeholders enabled the honing of objectives, a universally-acceptable case record form (CRF) was developed and, an operations committee was established to manage the process. Institutions will be invited to participate in piloting the CRF to enable evaluation thereof.

RESULTS & CONCLUSION

It is envisaged that the Registry will be successfully established, and can be rolled out at country level in order to prevent RF among children and thus avoid RHD and cardiac surgery. As an initiative of the A.S.A.P Programme, together with the National Department of Health guidelines for the prevention and treatment of RF/RHD, it is certainly feasible that both RF and RHD could be eradicated from SA within one or two generations.