Healthy Skin and ARF Prevention

The skin is the body’s largest and only externally visible organ.

The skin protects the inner workings of the body, and so healthy skin is essential for maintaining overall health and well-being. Itchy skin infections such as scabies, tinea and headlice and eczema can cause breaks in the skin, facilitating the entry of Streptococcus pyogenes (Strep A) and Staphylococcus aureus bacteria and development of skin sores and boils. 

Current research shows skin infections affect more than 162 million children around the world at any one time, with the highest numbers in the Pacific, Asia, and Africa. In Australia, nearly half of remote living Aboriginal children experience a skin sore at any one time, by far the highest rate in the world. We are working to better understand how much of a problem skin sores are for urban living Aboriginal children.

Skin infections can cause shame and stigma, loss of sleep, poor concentration at school, cross-infection with friends and family, and serious downstream health consequences including: sepsis, bone and joint infections, Acute Rheumatic Fever (ARF), Rheumatic Heart Disease (RHD) and Acute post-streptococcal glomerulonephritis (APSGN).

A big part of the problem is that amongst competing priorities, skin infections often aren’t recognised and are commonly left untreated. Whilst skin infections are so common, their importance to overall health has been forgotten.

The Healthy Skin and ARF Prevention team is one of five teams in the END RHD program working across all aspects of RHD prevention. The Healthy Skin and ARF Prevention Team have a focus on primary prevention of RHD through programmatic and community-driven approaches to healthy skin, improved detection of sore throats and other aspects of primordial and primary prevention. When these don’t work, we lead hospital based clinical trials to improve treatment outcomes for kids.