When antibiotic prevention and the public health initiatives fail, or when the disease is immediately severe, children with RHD inevitably require expensive, technology intensive, life saving heart surgery.  

 

Since 2010, heart surgery has been available for patients with RHD at the Windhoek Central Hospital. Through the course of our work we find that 40% of our patients in our national register have needed heart surgery and they have had surgery for severe disease at a young age.  The first 5 years of our experience has recently been analysed and reported.