The Second Rheumatic Heart Disease Forum Report

The second rheumatic heart disease (RHD) forum was held on February 18, 2013, at the Sixth World Congress of Pediatric Cardiology and Cardiac Surgery in Cape Town, South Africa, to focus attention on key areas in global RHD control, management, and prevention. Building on the foundation of the first RHD forum, over 150 interested participants met to discuss critical issues on the RHD landscape. Unique to this meeting was a mixture of diverse backgrounds and disciplines, all crucially important to the conversation around RHD control and prevention. Some clear priorities have emerged for RHD activities in the next era: the necessity for political intervention and policy change; increasing the health workforce by incorporating teaching, training, and task-shifting; revitalizing the research agenda by merging basic, clinical, and translational research; and obtaining universal access to high-quality penicillin. There was also an urgent request for new resources; for existing resources to be further developed, improved, and shared across platforms; and for resources to be supported in the nonmedical arena. Finally, the necessity of involving the patient community in the ongoing discussion was highlighted. The participants of both the first and second RHD forum represent a new, thriving, and growing community of RHD activists who should usher in a new era of significant improvements in RHD control and prevention.