Fight against rheumatic heart disease gets boost
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The Federal Government will spend $2.5 million to combat a fatal heart disease that is predominantly found in Indigenous Australians.
Rheumatic heart disease has been virtually wiped out in the developed world but it affects about 3 per cent of Aborigines.
The federal Indigenous Health Minister, Warren Snowdon, says the money will be used to set up a new organisation called RHD Australia, which will coordinate efforts to eradicate the disease.
"Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are eight times more likely to than non-Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to be hospitalised for rheumatic heart disease and nearly 20 times as likely to die from it," Mr Snowdon said.
"So what we need to do is address the issues as they are currently and that is treating the people who currently have the disease and at the same time put in the processes to prevent them getting the disease."
RHD Australia will be established under the Darwin-based Menzies School of Health Research.
Its director, Jonathan Carapetis, says he hopes it is the first step to wiping out the disease in Australia.
"This is something that we at the Menzies School of Health Research, and I guess in the wider community, have been battling for about a decade and a half," he said.
"And at last I think there is light at the end of the tunnel."
The official announcement about rheumatic heart disease will be made during a visit to Darwin today by the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd.
Mr Rudd will officially open the Territory's long-awaited oncology unit at Royal Darwin Hospital.
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