Health

Nigeria has the highest global burden of Sickle cell anaemia – Expert

 

By Damilola Alamu

Nigeria has been said to have the highest global burden of sickle cell  anaemia despite the widespread awareness over the health challenge.
A medical practitioner with the Kwara State Specialist Hospital, Alagbado, Ilorin, Aishat Otuyo disclosed this at a one-day day seminar organised by the Federation of Muslim Women Associations in Nigeria Youth (FOMWANY), Kwara State chapter.
She noted that out of the total of 305.773 burden of Sickle Cell Anaemia (SCA) worldwide, Nigeria has 91.011, adding that  about 20 percent of every 1,000 live births annually translates into about 150,000 children born yearly with the health challenge in Nigeria.
She  explained that sickle cell disease as a generic  disorder of haemoglobin, while aneamia is a condition in which there is not enough healthy red blood cell to carry adequate oxygen throughout the body.
According to her, sickle cell disease is a pan-ethnic condition with the highest prevalence among those of African descent.
“Nigeria has the highest number of homozygous cases in the world with a prevalence of sickle cell anaemia ranging between 1.5-3.1% (Average 2%).
“Over 150,000 babies are born each year with sickle cell anaemia in Nigeria.
Over 40 million Nigerians are carriers of the sickle cell gene.
She said that SCA can be inherited and the manifestation of the disease include two essential pathological processes arising from sickling: heamolysis and vaso-occlusion; occurrence of sickling at the venous end of capilaries, while unsikling occurs at the arterial end which makes the cell become irreversibly sickled.
Sickle cell traits she noted are more resistance to malaria than those with two normal haemoglobin genes and making the gene to persist.
Otuyo, who spoke on the topic “Pre Marital Scanning’ identified adequate nutrition and hydration, antioxidant therapy as the management of SCA, said it can be prevented through genotype test, advocacy and awareness.
“We have prevalence of 20 per cent of sickle cell disease in Nigeria. The major issue is that a lot of couples still don’t check their genotype status before marriage. The awareness is very low. The social welfare of sickle patients is not encouraging. They don’t have access to quality health care which results to complication.”

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