Sickle Cell News January 5th the 11th

Sickle Cell News January 5th the 11th




Welcome back to the sickle cell news. After a long hiatus we are back and have many new updates in the medical world to share.

News this week included a story out of Boston Medical Center. In an article written by Healthcannel.com, an online website dedicated to health issues effecting Boston, the Boston Medical Center has “significantly improved influenza, or flu, vaccination rates among pediatric patients with sickle cell disease during the last two flu seasons.”

It was explained in the article that children suffering from sickle cell disease are at a higher risk of complications from the flu and “are hospitalized at a rate 56 times that of children without SCD, according to a previous study.” It was also explained that children with sickle cell disease often need the flu shot to stand a chance during flu season. Luckily due to the studies and records being made as early as 1978 there have been improvements to how well people with sickle cell disease react to flu vaccinations. As the article explained “BMC then implemented several quality improvement methods to achieve the substantial increase to a 90 percent vaccination rate.”

The article seemed to end on a high note when it explained that “the BMC (Boston Medical Center) has surpassed Healthy People’s 2020 goal of having 80 percent of children aged 6 months to 21 years old vaccinated against the flu.

If you would like to learn more about the issue you can find the original article here: http://www.healthcanal.com/infections/flu/58806-bmc-pediatric-sickle-cell-disease-patients-achieve-near-perfect-influenza-vaccination-rate.html




Other good news included issues involving babies born in London England. According to the Nottingham Post "life saving treatment could be given to more children after public health officials outlined plans to screen more babies with life threatening conditions."




The reason why this is so big for sickle cell disease is because of on of the quotes in the article

Public health minister for England Jane Ellison said, "expanding the screening has the potential to make a huge difference to the lives of babies born with rare genetic disorders.” He also said that "detecting the disorders early can help prevent babies being severely disabled or even dying, which is absolutely vital for the families affected."

This whole method of early testing for rare genetic disorders can apply to sickle cell and one of the diseases. It was mentioned in the article that sickle cell anemia was one of the other rare genetic disorders being checked for. As long as this procedure goes through it can and most likely show the large numbers of sickle cell sufferers and also allow for early treatment.

If you would like to read the online version of the article click here: http://www.nottinghampost.com/Babies-debilitating-genetic-conditions-receive/story-25806218-detail/story.html
If you have any comments questions or concerns email us at thesickleinme@gmail.com