Care for persons living with Sickle Cell: Advocate charges

01-06-2011
A Sickle Cell Condition Advocate, Charlotte Owusu says persons living with sickle cell disease can live up to 80 years and more only if they are given the needed attention and care to survive. Speaking in an interview with Radio Ghana at Bolgatanga, Mrs. Owusu denounced public claim that sickle cell patients cannot survive up to age 30 and above, hence, the need to erase such negative perceptions attached to the disease. The disease she moreover, indicated is not spiritually acquired but rather a disease transferred from parents to child. She therefore, called for an end to all the injustices meted out to persons living with the disease since it was no fault of theirs that they acquire the disease and should be accorded with the needed care and protection they deserve. She said the wellbeing of persons living with the disease is paramount and called on the general public to show love and compassion to them in order to ensure their total survival. This she noted can only be done if they are supported medically and financially. She revealed that about 2 percent of the country’s population is living with the disease as millions of people are being affected worldwide. According to her, an estimated 20,000 persons worldwide are born each year with the disease whilst 20-25 percent of the said population carries the sickle cell genes. Mrs. Owusu described sickle cell as a genetic inherited condition where one carries the gene for sickle cell, and mentioned some of the possible effects as lungs and kidney infections, delay in growth, stroke, anaemia, jaundice, leg ulcer, as well as severe pains in the chest and abdomen among other damages caused to the body’s organ. She revealed that parents carrying the trait for sickle cell disorder are likely to transmit the disease to their born and unborn children, stressing that, if both parents carry the trait for a sickle cell disorder, then there is a 25 percent with each pregnancy for that child to inherit sickle cell disease. There is also a 50 percent chance for the child to have the trait, whilst, there is a 25 percent chance of the child not getting the trait. According to her, majority of the populace have little or no idea of the disease and die ignorantly due to lack of education. She therefore called on the general public to patronize the various health facilities to be screened and tested to enable them know their status. She said, her outfit as a form of intervention would be embarking on a massive public education in schools, churches, market centers and communities to increase public knowledge on the disease and called for total corporation at all levels.
GBC END IA