Neglected Cardiovascular Diseases Expert Group

Dr. Antonio Luiz Ribeiro is Professor of Internal Medicine and Chair for Research and Innovation in the University Hospital of the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), Belo Horizonte, Brazil, where he served as Medical Officer (2006-2010) and Director-General (2010-2014). He is the Past President of the International Society of Electrocardiology and Associate Editor of the BMJ Heart and Journal of Electrocardiology. He has been working with digital health and implementation science and is the leader of the Telehealth Network of Minas Gerais, a large telehealth network in Brazil, with more than 1,000 remote points, with a focus in tele-cardiology: this network has performed more than 5 million ECGs since 2006. 

Andrea Beaton is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics and a Pediatric Cardiologist at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital. She is a founding member of the Rheumatic Heart Disease Research Collaborative in Uganda (RRCU) which has collaboratively published over 40 studies across the translational spectrum in RHD research. Dr. Beaton is currently the Center Director of an American Heart Association Strategically Focused Research Network (ADD-RHD) that is developing technology-enabled approaches to get more patients living with RHD onto secondary antibiotic prophylaxis. She also led the GOAL Trial, determining the impact of secondary antibiotic prophylaxis on latent RHD, and will lead the follow-up study of these patients, GOAL-Post. Dr. Beaton has multiple leadership positions in the American Heart Association (immediate past-chair of the Rheumatic Fever, Endocarditis, and Kawasaki Disease Committee, International Committee, Epidemiology and Statistics Committee) and World Health Organization (Chair, RHD Guideline Development Group).

Prof. Friedrich Thienemann undertook his post graduate training in internal medicine, infectious diseases, tropical medicine and global health at Charité University Hospital Berlin and the University of Cape Town. In 2009, he joined the Department of Medicine and Institute of Infectious Disease and Molecular Medicine at the University of Cape Town and served as investigator of several EU, NIH, BMGF, and university-funded projects and successfully administered multi-national, multi-site clinical trials and cohort studies across Africa. In 2019, Prof. Friedrich Thienemann established the research group General Medicine & Global Health (GMGH) with two sites, at the University of Zurich and at the Cape Heart Institute of the University of Cape Town. His work is on optimizing diagnosis & treatment of tuberculosis, understanding the intersection of infectious and non-communicable disease, and in particular post tuberculosis cardiovascular & pulmonary sequelae (LongTB). Prof. Friedrich Thienemann joined the Neglected Cardiovascular Diseases Expert Group in 2021 with special interest in post infectious cardiovascular diseases such as rheumatic heart disease (RHD), Chagas Disease, LongTB, and Long COVID. He is the infectious disease expert amongst the cardiologists within the expert group.

Dating back to my initial training in Guangzhou in the late 1980s and Melbourne, Australia in the early 1990s, I have accumulated research experience within nearly 40 years majoring in rheumatic heart disease, interventional cardiology, and other cardiovascular diseases, with research published in the top academic journals such as The New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA Internal Medicine. I used to participate with interest in a number of multinational clinical trials, as co-investigator in the RACE study, TIMI-25, the CCS-II, as Co-Principal Investigator in the Sino-SIRIUS Study, etc, presenting the latest research results and knowledge in the former EURO-PCR, European Society of Cardiology (ESC) and Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics (TCT) and other international conferences. I have served as president or vice president of the Annual South China International Congress of Cardiology (SCICC), the Cardiovascular Interventional Summit (CIS), and the Hong Kong College of Cardiology Annual Scientific Congress. I have worked on the Editorial Board of a series of journals, including the Chinese Journal of Cardiology, Editorial Board Member of the Chinese Edition of the Journals of the American College of Cardiology (JACC), and European Heart Journal(EHJ). With the honor to be a part of the Neglected Cardiovascular Disease Expert Group, I wish to further contribute to the improvement and promotion of standardized and effective treatment for patients with rheumatic heart disease, as well as participate in the latest research in the field.