YourHealth
An untreated sore throat can lead to rheumatic fever
Find out more about the symptoms, and how to prevent this serious illness. Read more
Rheumatic fever
Rheumatic fever is a serious illness, which in New Zealand most often affects school-aged children and young adults living in the North Island.
This section provides information about what the Ministry and the health sector are doing to address rheumatic fever.
Latest updates
14 Sep: Invitation to the Rheumatic Fever Programme Hui (PDF, 23 KB)
The Ministry of Health invites you to attend a workshop where information will be provided on this new Programme.
About rheumatic fever
The usual symptoms of rheumatic fever are:
- a warm, swollen painful joint (or joints)
- fever
- tiredness
- stomach pain
- sometimes a skin rash or lumps under the skin that aren’t itchy or painful
- sometimes jerky uncoordinated movements of hands, feet, tongue and face.
Rheumatic fever occurs when the body produces a strong immune response to a throat infection caused by a particular type of bacteria - Group A Streptococcus (“Strep throat”).
Most “strep” throat infections get better without developing into rheumatic fever. However, in a small proportion of people, an untreated sore throat can cause the body’s defence mechanism (the immune system) to react very strongly, causing the heart, joints, brain and skin to become inflamed and swollen.
If this inflammation causes scarring on the heart valves the affected person can develop a condition known as rheumatic heart disease. Rheumatic heart disease can require heart valve replacement surgery, or even cause premature death.
Preventing rheumatic fever and rheumatic heart disease
Rheumatic fever can largely be prevented by antibiotic treatment of a streptococcal sore throat, to clear up the infection before it can develop into rheumatic fever. Presence of streptococcal bacteria can be confirmed by a throat swab (which a laboratory uses to test for the bacteria).
People who have had rheumatic fever need extra medical care for many years afterwards to prevent further damage to the heart. This includes 10 years of monthly penicillin injections and additional cardiology and dental care for those with rheumatic heart disease.
Rheumatic fever: an overview
Last year 182 New Zealanders were admitted to hospital with acute rheumatic fever and 64 New Zealanders were admitted with recurrent rheumatic fever. There has been a trend towards an increasing rate of hospital admissions for acute rheumatic fever since 1995.
Three in four hospital admissions for acute rheumatic fever are children aged 5-14 years.
Most rheumatic fever occurs in people of either Maori or Pacific ethnicity. Maori are 20 times more likely and Pacific people 37 times more likely to be hospitalised with acute rheumatic fever, compared to people of non-Maori / Other ethnicity.
In the past five years most parts of the North Island have experienced cases of rheumatic fever. There are relatively few cases in the South Island.
Maps of the most affected areas
Four areas in particular have experienced comparatively high rates of rheumatic fever hospitalisations, as shown in the maps below:
- Counties Manukau (PDF, 221 KB)
- Flaxmere, Hawke's Bay (PDF, 177 KB)
- Porirua - Porirua East, Cannon’s Creek and Waitangirua (PDF, 159 KB)
- Northland - from Ahipara, Awanui and Kaitaia down to Moerewa, Kaikohe, Omapere and Opononi (PDF, 201 KB)
What is happening to address rheumatic fever
The Ministry of Health has a vision for New Zealand where rheumatic fever will become a rare occurrence. Furthermore, the Ministry’s vision is that no ethnic groups or geographical communities should be disadvantaged with higher rates of rheumatic fever.
Key areas of work
Key areas of work that the Ministry and health sector are focussing on include:
- strengthening of frontline primary health care services.
- additional community-based sore throat services to very high-risk populations (eg: school-based services)
- raising community awareness and improving health care worker training
- improving our surveillance, monitoring and research for rheumatic fever
- working with other sectors on factors that can contribute to throat infections and other infectious diseases (eg. housing)
In this section
- Information and resources on rheumatic fever for health professionals. Read more
Page last updated: 14 September 2011
Twitter
Facebook