Mr Chukwudi Nwabueze, Director, Daren’s Bay Ltd., distributors of pharmaceutical products, has called for a policy to promote screening of newborns for sickle cell disease to facilitate intervention to reduce burden.
Nwabueze told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos on Thursday that late diagnosis had been a barrier to early intervention in the disease in Africa.
According to him, Africa bears the highest sickle cell disease burden in the world.
He claimed that many children born in Sub-Saharan Africa would have to wait until six months old before their genotypes could be determined.
“It is until six months before the earliest intervention, unlike in developed societies.
“The disparity in outcomes of children with sickle cell disease in developing countries is out of ignorance.
“It is our goal to break this barrier in Africa, using sickle cell scan, which can be used to determine genotype in infants, children and adults,” he said.
Nwabueze noted that sickle cell disease’s mortality rate was high, regretting that many children with the disease died before their fifth birthday.
According to him, only one out of 10 may survive above five years.
He called on governments to introduce policies and programmes that would encourage screening of newborns for the disease.
“In Africa, every five minutes, a baby with sickle cell disease is born.
“Nigeria is the country with the heaviest sickle cell burden in the world with 95,073 births as at 2014 established, followed by DR Congo with 40,210, and India, 26,060,” he said.
Nwabueze said that with sickle cell scan – a new technology – detection of sickle cell anemia in newborn could be done within five minutes.
