Toakase Fakakovikaetau: Pioneering pediatrician in Tonga

The ProCor team is enormously excited and proud to share with our global community a newly published Lancet profile of Dr. Toa Fakakovikaetau, 2008 recipient of ProCor's Louise Lown Heart Hero Award (The Lancet Vol 373, 20 June 2009).

"Toakase Fakakovikaetau: pioneering paediatrician in Tonga" describes Dr. Toa's dedicated efforts to screen Tongan schoolchildren for rheumatic heart disease and provide early treatment so they can grow up healthy. "These basic preventive steps in reducing the burden of heart disease have liberated precious resources in a country where the cost of sending one child abroad for treatment matched the cost of upgrading preventive services in primary care facilities..." The Lancet writes.

The article is available open-access at http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(09)61138-7/fulltext.

We congratulate Dr. Toa on this much-deserved global recognition and believe that it will be instrumental in attracting attention to the urgent need for increased efforts to prevent rheumatic heart disease, together with increased support for her work and that of other unsung heart heroes around the world.

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