Salako Advocates Moderate Lifestyle For Sickle Cell Patients

For sufferers of sickle cell anaemia, the best way to avoid crisis and living to a ripe age is to adhere strictly to drug prescriptions by physicians, imbibe the culture of proper personal hygiene and generally doing things in moderation.

Chairman, Lagos State Health Service Commission, Dr. Wunmi Salako, stated this at a programme on Sickle Cell Disorder in Children, organised by Onikan Health Centre and Maternity, Lagos, to mark year 2012 Sickle Cell Day.

Salako said once the normal routine is maintained, coupled with visits to the hospital as at when due, patients have no need to worry about the disease, which in the first place is brought on them by ignorant parents.

He said the state government is spending fortunes to tackle the menace through the provision of prompt medical assistance to patients of the disorder, especially children in all the state-owned hospitals.

According to Dr Salako, a tropical medicine expert, intending couples will be doing themselves a world of good by checking their genotype to avoid a life of constraints, unnecessary expenses and outright dependence on drugs for their children in future, in the event of children picking SS genotype from them, just as he cautioned the people against discriminating against people with the ailment.

In his keynote address at the event held under the theme: “Keeping Hope Alive”, Chairman, Sickle Cell Foundation of  Nigeria, Professor Olu Akinyanju, revealed that over 40 million Nigerians are healthy carriers of AS as against three million Americans, adding that Nigeria as a country has the largest burden as over 150,000 children born yearly in the country are sickle cell-prone.

Speaking on “Sickle Cell Disorder: The journey so far”, the Head of Department of Paediatrics, Onikan Health Centre and coordinator of the one-day event, Dr. Tunji Alakija, corrected the erroneous belief that the disorder is caused by supernatural forces like witchcraft, saying that his appeal to good Samaritans in the 90s led to the beginning of an established SCD Centre now incorporated into the paediatrics outpatient clinic at Onikan where patients are seen every Wednesday.

According the renowned Paediatrician, “through the effective counselling service offered to patients on the disorder, many suffers who would have died have been saved”, even as he enjoined the state government to enact a policy that will make the drugs and all test related to the main management of SCD free in government hospitals.

While canvassing for the inclusion of courses and knowledge of sickle cell in school curriculum beginning from primary school, Dr Alakija urged churches and mosques not to ban  prospective couples from marrying if found to be ‘’at Risk’’ viz-a-viz AS and AS, as long as they have gone for counselling and are making ‘’informed choices’’

The Medical Director of the hospital, Dr Oluwatoyin  Oriola, in his vote of thanks,  encouraged patients irrespective of state of origin to feel free to come to the hospital for treatment as government has put in place necessary facilities for the treatment of the disorder.