The Ministry of Health is looking at making it a policy to screen all children in Primary schools at least once for Rheumatic heart disease.
This is the confirmation from Health Ministry's Chief Pediatrician, Dr. Joseph Kado who said they want to start the screening process to quickly detect the disease in children.
Dr. Kado said they have only screened over 10,000 students.
Meanwhile, at least 60 people are dying from Rheumatic heart disease each year with the average age at death being 33.
There have also been 49 deaths related to Rheumatic heart disease in patients under 18 years of age from 2007.
According to statistics revealed by the Fiji Rheumatic Heart Disease Control Program, 3.5 percent of all children in Fiji have definite or probable Rheumatic Heart Disease.
Dr. Kado said children as young as six are dying as a result of this disease.
Rheumatic heart disease starts from a sore throat where children may or may not have a fever.
Dr. Joseph Kado said while most sore throats will fix themselves and there will be no long term problems, about 10 percent of these children develop complications and one of them is Rheumatic fever which ends up damaging their heart valve.
Story by: Dhanjay Deo
