An historic assembly took place in Zambezi Sun, Livingstone Zambia bringing together Africa’s leading experts in rheumatic heart disease (RHD) to design a roadmap for the control and elimination of the disease in Africa.

The second Pan-African “Stop Rheumatic Heart Disease A.S.A.P in Africa” Continental Congress, being held under the auspices of the Pan African Society of Cardiology (PASCAR) and in partnership with Novartis, included cardiac specialists from more than 30 countries in Africa as well as representatives from the World Health Organization (WHO), the African Union Commission (AUC), and the World Heart Federation (WHF).

“The time is now to scale up our efforts if we are to realise the elimination of rheumatic heart disease in Africa in our lifetime,” said Prof Bongani Mayosi, a leading advocate for patients with RHD globally.

The meeting took place from 31 January to 4 February in Livingstone, Zambia. The Minister of Health of Zambia gave the opening address, welcoming the fifty delegates from over twenty countries from across Africa, Cape to Cairo. “Despite its high prevalence, for a very long, time rheumatic heart disease has been a neglected disease in Africa, but this is slowly changing,” said Dr John Musuku, paediatric cardiologist at the University Teaching Hospital in Lusaka, Zambia.

Under the auspices of PASCAR and in partnership with Novartis, Dr Musuku is leading a broad effort in Zambia to measure prevalence of RHD in school children and a new electronic patient registry. The other delegates are working in all areas in Africa, leading important new research in RHD contemporary measures as well as the genetic epidemiology of RHD- the REMEDY study and RHDGen represents the start of a new era in ground-breaking RHD research in Africa.