‘150,000 Children Suffer Sickle Cell Anaemia Annually’

The most common and very severe of the sickle cell diseases, the Sickle Cell Anaemia (SCA) has been said to occur in at least 150,000 Nigerian newborn children annually.
The nation’s population of patients with Sickle Cell anaemia is between the range of 3-5 million with about 25 per cent of the population being carriers of the gene for the disease.
The Rivers State Coordinator, Sickle Cell Support Society of Nigeria (SCSSN), Dr Dorothy A. Okoh who  revealed this at a Sickle Cell fund in Port Harcourt recently, noted that the statistics portend a grave danger to the fight against the disease.
Okoh stated that the percentage was such that should awaken the nation’s populace on the need for the knowledge of their genotype particularly prior to their selection of life partners which she said would enhance the efforts of ending the scourge.
While noting that sickle cell anaemia presents with life threatening crises, Okoh maintained that the conditions can easily be prevented or managed based on proper education and counseling.
Okoh said Sickle Cell disease is an inherited disorder that is completely preventable if patients are properly informed through counseling to undergo genotype testing before marriage. This is aimed at making informed decision to marry the partner with the appropriate haemoglobin genotype and avoid the marriage between couple that are both As or SC and AS (carriers)”, Okoh said.
She averred  that people that were born with the condition need not die in pain or prematurely as they can be helped maintaining that the Sickle Cell Support Society of Nigeria was aimed at improving the conditions of the patients through counseling and education.
According to her, “having been involved in the care and management of patients of sickle cell disease and understanding their plights, we are aware that these people can be helped to live a normal life as much as possible by providing support. It is for this reason that the Sickle Cell Support Society of Nigeria (SCSSN) initiated to moreso debunk the fears of early death by patients as well as the stigmatization against them”.
The Rivers State Coordinator of the SCSSN further revealed that as parts of efforts to achieving his, the society has raised a platform of conducting screening at the community level as well as educating individuals, patients and health workers on the management of sickle cell disease.
Describing the disease as a multidisciplinary disorder, the expert said its management needed the combined efforts of all stakeholders without and outside the health sector to ensuring that the disease and its accompanied fears and stigmatization become a thing of the past in the state and nation at large.

Lady Godknows Ogbulu