Nathanial Harland was four years old when his daycare teachers noticed the usually playful boy was lethargic and alone in a corner. That day a doctor listened to the child’s chest and told his family to take Nathaniel straight to hospital – he had a heart murmur.
Further testing showed his heart had been damaged from an earlier, undiagnosed bout of rheumatic fever, a serious but entirely preventable disease that has been all but wiped out in most developed countries but which is still present in New Zealand and Australia.
