A health executive is warning that lives could be in danger if a South Australian heart disease prevention program isn’t continued.
Several National Partnership Agreements will finish at the end of June, including a rheumatic heart disease control program.
Over the last two years the program has seen a 20 per cent rise in First Nation’s children receiving injections for the preventable disease, and the creation of a nation-wide register to help monitor sufferers.
South Australia’s communicable disease control branch director Ann Koehler is concerned that people will be lost to follow-up checks and more will die from the disease in their 20s and 30s.
