‘Sore throat could turn into heart disease in children’

- TOI, 27th Sept 2013

New Delhi: In developed countries, a child’s sore throat is unlikely to cause anxiety. But in low income countries like India, with its poverty and over-crowded conditions, a sore throat can quickly spiral into rheumatic heart disease that kills 2.3 lakh people every year across the world. 

    In India, the disease burden has been grossly under-estimated with prevalence studies done earlier varying from 3 or 5 children affected per 1,000. New studies show that the ratio of affected children could be as high as 20 per 1,000. Ahead of the World Heart Day on September 29, the Lancet has published a global report that says that between 15 million and 20 million people are believed to have rheumatic heart disease and nearly 3 lakh new cases occur every year, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa, central Asia, the Pacific Islands, and among the indigenous populations of Australia and New Zealand.
    

Scientists say that the culprit is the group A streptococcus, with its tendency, given the right conditions, to trigger a pathogenic sequence starting with pharyngitis (strep throat), followed, in a small proportion of cases, by acute rheumatic fever, and ending, in about 60% of rheumatic fever cases, with the life-threatening heart valve damage characteristic of rheumatic heart disease. The right conditions are those of low-income countries where children and young adults, the main victims of streptococcus A, live in overcrowded housing and lack adequate access to health care. The problem, though, as most cardiologists see it, is that despite the toll of death, disease, and disability that the disorder causes, and despite the fact that, if caught in time, it can be easily and inexpensively prevented and cured by simple penicillin treatment. World Heart Federation president Prof Srinath Reddy told TOI, “It is of urgent importance that penicillin be made part and parcel of the primary health centre in India.’’