The mean percentage of income spent on care was significant and amounted to catastrophic health expenditure for a third of the families. Government input in strengthening the existing cardiac centres, establish new ones and subsidising the cost of surgery to meet the needs for open heart surgery for children with CHDs is recommended.

Background: Group A streptococcus (GAS) is a major cause of mortality in man. Regular disease surveillance can be achieved through evaluation of throat carriage. Objectives: To evaluate GAS throat carriage amongst nursery and primary schools pupils in Benin City, Nigeria. Method: This cross sectional study was carried out between September and November 2011. A multistage random sampling method was used to recruit the pupils. Throat swabs were obtained for microscopy and Lancefied grouping. Results: 426 pupils were recruited of which 363(85.2) were in primary and 63(14.8%) in nursery schools. The subjects were aged 2 to 15years and 203(47.7%) were males. Of the 426 pupils, 123 (28.9%) had positive throat swabs for β haemolytic streptococcus (βHS). None of the isolate was GAS. The isolates were groups C (50.4%), D (38.2%) and G (11.4%). Conclusion: Although βHS throat carriage rate in this study is high, there was no GAS isolate. This may suggest low prevalence of GAS related diseases in the community.