Kids at risk of rheumatic fever top priority in housing policy

Families with children at-risk of rheumatic fever will be fast-tracked to the top of the waiting list for state housing. Photo / NZ Herald

The Government has finally plugged a gaping hole in its $45 million programme to reduce rheumatic fever, unveiling the first of a package of measures to help overcrowded families into bigger and warmer housing.

Housing Minister Nick Smith says families with a child who has been hospitalised with a risk factor for rheumatic fever will jump to the head of the queue for Housing NZ houses.

The Ministry of Health is also trying to put together a "housing hub" to link families with rheumatic fever to other services providing insulation, curtains and minor repairs to private sector housing. The two initiatives mean children with the "strep A" infection that can lead to rheumatic fever, found through a school-based screening programme now operating in several low-income parts of Auckland, will get help to tackle the overcrowded, cold and damp homes that are the disease's main risk factors.

The disease has virtually disappeared in other developed countries and among Pakeha here, but Maori and Pacific children have among the highest rates in the world.

The Government has budgeted $45 million through a deal with the Maori Party to cut the incidence by two-thirds by 2017.

Dr Smith marked the new initiative by carrying furniture into an extended six-bedroom Housing NZ house in Mt Roskill for the family of 12-year-old Tristan Katoa, whose heart valves were badly scarred by rheumatic fever in March.

His father, Kuli Katoa, said Tristan could breathe normally now but could not walk to school and would not be allowed to play sport for the next 10 years. "For a few months he was going only half-days to school. Last week he started going full days."

Mr Katoa, his wife Potilo and their 10 children, aged between 5 months and 22 years, have lived for the past four years in a three-bedroom state house. Mr Katoa has been trying to get a bigger house, but without success until yesterday.

"If I had it before, I don't know ... " he said. He did not complete the sentence because it was too painful to think that Tristan need not have caught the disease.

Dr David Jansen of the National Hauora Coalition, which runs the Mana Kidz screening programme in South Auckland, said the Housing NZ policy shift would complement the Health Ministry's "housing hub" initiative that will link families in private housing to the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority for insulation subsidies and to charities for curtains and minor house repairs.

"From Mana Kidz we can identify households with three strep A infections, and we can do a housing assessment. There are also other criteria - they have to be NZ citizens, there has to be overcrowding, and there has to be more than one child in the house," he said.

Auckland University rheumatic fever expert Professor Diana Lennon said the initiatives were welcome but would not fully replace the former Healthy Housing programme, a full "wraparound" service to assess and improve health and housing needs.

Rheumatic fever

• What: Scarring of heart valves caused by a bug called group A streptococcus (strep A).

• Effects: No energy - "a 15-year-old could be walking around with the equivalent of a 70- to 80-year-old heart."

• Who: Almost disappeared among Pakeha, but Maori and Pacific rates are among world's highest.

• Why: Rates 23 times higher in the most overcrowded fifth of homes than in the least crowded fifth.