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By Stephen Adeleye.
Dr Matthew Durowaye, a Consultant Paediatrician, at the Federal Medical Centre (FMC), Lokoja, has urged the Federal Government to standardise private laboratories across the country for effective diagnosis of sickle-cell disease.
Durowaye made call on Tuesday in Lokoja at the programme organised by an NGO, Hope Aglow for Life and Children Health Initiative (HALCHI), as part of activities to mark the “World Sickle Cell Day 2018”, with the theme: “Breaking The Sickle Cycle”.
He said that government should support standardisation of laboratory services, saying many couples had fell victims of having sickle-cell children due to wrong confirmatory test from substandard private laboratories.
“Lots of couple who got married with belief that they cannot have sickle-cell children due to test they did in private laboratories, but end up giving birth to children with sickle-cell anemia, and they begin to wonder what happened?.
“But when they now subjected themselves to test in high standard laboratories, they found out that both of them are actually carrier of sickle-cell trait ‘S’.
“So the government would need to put a lot of things in place to ensure real standardisation form of private laboratories,” he said.
The expert, however, urged couples who had already married with such condition to always seek early help at the early stage of any of their pregnancies.
Durowaye, who is also the Head of Heamato – Oncology Unit, FMC, Lokoja, also appealed to the government to ensure that the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) covered children with sickle cell disease.
He added that major drugs for sickle-cell disease should be made available for those patients that had enrolled under the scheme through their parents, stressing that most centres did not have those major drugs.
He said: “Sickle cell disease (SCD) is not the end of life and not a dead sentence, if properly managed with adequate knowledge and support the patient will survive”.
The medical doctor, therefore, urged the public to be passionate about breaking the cycle of sickle-cell by breaking the cycle of transformation of the red blood cells to abnormal shape, mistrust, chronic pain, and individual ‘S’ gene carrier should not marry themselves.
Earlier, Dr Pat Medupin, the Founder of HALCHI, said that the NGO commemorated the Day annually, saying their ultimate aim was to have a Standard Sickle-Cell Centre with state of the arts equipment.
According to her, the centre would enable the organisation to do neonatal screening and early infant diagnosis and also attend to sickle-cell anaemia children at highly subsidized rate if not free.
Medupin said: “Sickle Cell Disease is an inherited disorder that affects red blood cells making them become hard and “sickle shaped” instead of soft and round. Sickle cells cause anaemia, pain and many other problems.
“In Nigeria, about 150,000 babies are born annually with this condition and about 25 per cent of Nigerians carry the sickle cell trait.
“It was reported by a group of Scientist (Singh, 2013) that this number is expected to increase by 33 per cent by the year 2050-what a burden!
“This annual celebration is a directive of the United Nations Organization that the world sickle cell be celebrated on every June 19, basically to create awareness about the disease.
“Today, there will also be free genotype testing for young, unmarried youths and children and giving out monthly drugs to our members. Visit our stand to see our various publications and the drugs we give out on monthly basis.”
One of the parents of the sickle-cell children, Mrs Zainab Yahaya, said that since her daughter was introduced to HALCHI, that she had never had any crisis because they have been following all the advice and instructions.
“With Hope Aglow, there is hope of life for children with sickle-cell disease. We are very grateful to the founder, God will continue to protect her,” Yahaya said.
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