Dr Bo Remenyi, one of the first female paediatric cardiologists in Australia and 2018 Australian of the Year for the Northern Territory, recently presented a public lecture on ‘Sliding door moments and rheumatic heart disease’, hosted by the Heart Research Institute as part of our annual Illuminate event celebrating science.
Her thought-provoking lecture is available below.
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The gap is not closing: rheumatic heart disease
Spending her days filling out countless death certificates for children dying of preventable heart disease in remote communities was the catalyst for Dr Remenyi to embark on a career tackling the Northern Territory’s rate of rheumatic heart disease (RHD).
Among the Indigenous population, the rate of RHD is currently the highest in the world, but very little has been done to date to try to reduce the rates of rheumatic fever. As recently as 2017, newly born Indigenous children are still expected to die 16 years earlier than non-Indigenous people in the Northern Territory.
As an internationally recognised expert in RHD, with publications in top tier journals Lancet and Nature Reviews Cardiology, Dr Remenyi is passionate about ridding Australia of RHD and putting a stop to this ongoing public health emergency faced by populations living in remote and rural Australia.
Originally arriving in Australia as a political refugee from Hungary, Dr Remenyi brings all of her expertise, determination and sheer hard work to close the gap in her adopted country.