We combat Rheumatic Heart Disease by training local health workers and improving access to care for vulnerable communities.
Reach believes global control of rheumatic fever (RF) and rheumatic heart disease (RHD) is achievable. Although understanding the interplay between RF/RHD, health delivery, and socioeconomic development remains imperfect, there is enough knowledge to make a real difference in disease burden today.
Clinicians, researchers, governments, civil society groups, and funding agencies have been working to tackle specific aspects of RF/RHD prevention and management. However, current efforts are often fragmented, not implemented at scale, not embedded within government structures, and lack sustainable funding. Several organisations have sought to address these gaps.
The passing of a World Health Organisation resolution on RF and RHD in 2018 and increasing demands for technical support from high-burden countries signal that urgent action is needed to scale up these efforts and provide the technical support necessary to make an RHD-free world a reality.
Reach is committed to providing flexible capacity development to country partners, particularly civil society, academic institutions, and Ministry of Health personnel in all regions. Reach’s support involves co-design processes with countries and the development of plans that revolve around country-identified priorities.
Reach-supported projects focus on strengthening health systems, and we work diligently with our partners to ensure we pave a course firmly aimed at achieving sustainable and scalable change at all levels of the health system. When requested, we assist partners in identifying suitable and strategically aligned donors who can fund RHD activities.
The centre of our work is people living with and at risk of RHD, along with the communities where they live, work, and learn. Through our Community Advisory Network (CAN), Reach involves individuals living with RHD developing our tools and resources. We support patient and carer education through our flipchart series and by sharing knowledge and experiences among the RHD community.
Highlights:
⦿ The development and implementation of a patient education flipchart appropriate for use in low-literacy populations is now in its second year of implementation in Brazil.
⦿ Implementing the Rheumatic Fever simplified algorithm in resource-limited healthcare settings in Uganda and Tanzania.
⦿ We are training maternal and child health personnel to use the RHD in Tajikistan's pregnancy flipcharts.
We support efforts to ensure that RF/RHD is a national health priority in high-burden regions and countries and provide guidance on the development of national strategies and action plans. To support evidence-based policymaking, we are facilitating data collection to provide estimates of the burden of disease.
Our services include technical advice that can extend to policy or clinical guidelines development, baseline situation assessments, proposal writing, project planning, and monitoring. We work alongside partners in endemic countries to plan and evaluate the implementation of Reach-developed tools, such as educational flipcharts for patients and carers.
Highlights:
⦿ Support in developing the first RF/RHD clinical guidelines endorsed by the Ministry of Health of the Republic of Tajikistan.
⦿ Implementation of a rapid situation assessment in Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and the Philippines.
⦿ Design and implementation of handheld echocardiography screening and health system strengthening programmes in Indonesia and the Philippines.
