Friday, March 29, 2024

Sickle cell: Nigeria begins bone marrow transplant December – Foundation

Nigeria is set to begin bone marrow transplant locally by December this year, The Point has leant.

Bone marrow transplant is a major cure for the severe condition and deadly sickle cell disease.

The Chief Executive Officer, Sickle Cell Foundation, Nigeria, Dr. Annette Akinsete, disclosed in an exclusive chat with our correspondent that the Lagos State Government had already given her foundation the sum of N200million to set up a centre for bone marrow transplant at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital, Idi-Araba.

Akinsete, who commended the Lagos State Government for its financial support, stated that with the setting up of the centre at LUTH, Nigerians suffering from sickle cell disease, especially those from poor homes, would now have easy access to its treatment and cure locally.

She added that annually about 150,000 babies were born every year in Nigeria with the sickle cell anaemia disease, while over 100,000 of them just managed to live up to five years before they die.

“Right now, it is the very rich that can send their children abroad to access this cure but before the end of this year, by God’s grace, we will be up and running in Lagos University Teaching Hospital. But it is the foundation’s center,” Akinsete said.

The SCF CEO explained further that in collaboration and agreement with the Italian government, the foundation already had trained doctors and nurses specialising in the management and treatment of the killer disease.

Akinsete said, “In the past four years, we have been able to send about 50 children to Rome and their treatment paid for by the Italian government.

In other words, it was free. The family only has to pay air fare. Despite that, it is a kind gesture by the Italian government. “Now they have transferred the technology to our people and trained them. Starting from December this year, God willing, we will start the treatment in Nigeria.”

She stressed that because of the high mortality recorded in the first five years of most of the sufferers of the disease, her Foundation decided to focus its attention on getting government to take more proactive action on the policies for treatment and cure.

“To ensure that we have a good policy that is preventive of the case, we want government to give direction, we haven’t seen the direction. Sickle Cell Foundation, as an NGO, is kind of championing the call for cure for sickle cell. In the whole of Nigeria, there is a vacuum that we have noticed, the kind of a gap that government has left and we have stepped into t h a t gap in order to give the public correct and accurate information on Sickle Cell,” she said.

Akinsete explained that in order to achieve accurate and uniform information on Sickle Cell treatment and cure, the foundation organised a coalition of Non-Governmental Organizations championing the cause of those suffering from the deadly disease, “because it has come to our notice that there are so many NGOs on Sickle Cell and they are all saying different things. They are not on the same page. So, we gathered them together as a bigger organisation in order for us to be sure they are conveying the correct and accurate information to the public.

“We have experts in Sickle Cell in the committee; so, we reviewed all their fliers. We’re not saying they should close shop but make sure that the information they are conveying to the public is accurate. This is actually what government should be doing, but we don’t mind, we are doing it. But if we have support, we will be happier.”

On the efforts of her foundation so far, the Public Health Physician noted that despite the statistics, some of the persons suffering from Sickle Cell Anemia still lived longer and well, “but they can’t do it alone, their families cannot do it alone and persons with sickle cell can never handle their situation alone. They need a lot of support groups and that is the reason we are advocating for Sickle cell clubs.

“We have Sickle cell clubs all over Lagos and beyond. We also have sickle cell clinics in other states of Nigeria. We really want to be everywhere in Nigeria but right now we are in Lagos, Edo, Delta and Kano in the North, where we run dedicated clinics with the support of MTN Foundation. They provide free drugs because people with this case have to be on treatment every day of their lives.

“They have to take drugs to prevent malaria, because malaria causes crisis. They have to take something for their blood, they have shortage of blood. They have to take folic acid daily to shoot up their blood level, otherwise they’ll die. What I like to also emphasise and which people don’t know is that children with sickle cell can get stroke and for that reason we have a unit here where we are able to determine those that are at the risk of stroke. We put them aside and give them preventive treatment.

Meanwhile, Nigeria joined the rest of the world to mark the Sickle Cell Day on June 19 with the theme, “Sickle Cell Anemia: Stop the Stigma,” amid reports that 500,000 children are born every year with this severe condition and that 50 per cent of them will die before the age of five.

World Sickle Cell Day was established by the United Nations General Assembly in 2008 in order to increase the awareness about sickle cell disease and its cure among the common public.

The special day was first celebrated on June 19, 2009. Sickle cell disease has become a common and foremost genetic disease worldwide which must be cured through fast awareness campaign, curable activities, early diagnosis and management.

The killer disease is the most frequent genetic disease worldwide. It is present in four continents in subSaharan Africa and in the Maghreb in Asia (Middle East, Arabia, Peninsula and India), in the Americas-in the North (USA), Centre (Guatemala, Caribbean Islands) and in the South (Brazil, Surinam, Guyana), in Southern Europe (Southern Italy and Sicily, Greece, Turkey).

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