The World Heart Federation (WHF) is excited to announce that the World Health Organization (WHO) has officially released its new Guideline on the Prevention and Diagnosis of Rheumatic Fever and Rheumatic Heart Disease. This key resource represents a major milestone in global efforts to combat rheumatic heart disease – a completely preventable condition that continues to affect over 55 million people worldwide, particularly in low- and middle-income countries as well as marginalized communities in middle- and high-income countries.
The call for international guidelines was first raised at the Seventy-First World Health Assembly in 2018, where Member States unanimously adopted a WHO Resolution on Rheumatic Fever and Rheumatic Heart Disease. In particular, Resolution WHA71.14 urges WHO to ‘foster international partnerships for mobilizing resources, sharing best practice methodologies, developing and supporting a strategic research and development agenda, and facilitating access to existing and new medicines and technologies’. Nonetheless, WHO recognized, in its 2021 Progress Report, that the absence of technical guidance and guidelines was a significant obstacle to the implementation of the Resolution. Today, a critical step forward has been made to ensure that individuals at risk of, or living with, rheumatic fever and rheumatic heart disease receive timely and appropriate diagnosis, treatment, and care, as well as support, to lead healthier, longer, lives.
WHF, alongside its members and global partners, have long advocated for such guidelines as key instruments to further reduce the health, social, and economic burdens of rheumatic fever and rheumatic heart disease – with several WHF Board and Committees members contributing significantly to its development. The new WHO guideline synthesizes the latest scientific evidence and offers practical, evidence-based, recommendations for national and local policymakers, technical experts and advisers, programme managers, healthcare providers, and researchers to strengthen prevention, diagnosis, and management of rheumatic fever and rheumatic heart disease. The recommendations will also assist Member States in adopting or updating national policies and guidelines for primary and secondary prevention and control in endemic regions.
WHF celebrates this significant achievement and urges all stakeholders, especially the global cardiovascular community, to implement the guidelines and mobilize concerted action to eliminate rheumatic heart disease once and for all.
For more information about WHF’s work on RHD and to get involved, please visit the RHD section of our website.
