This Week in Sickle Cell News November 24th to the 30th in the world

By Sean Marshall

Nigeria ranks number one in the world for  confirmed cases of sickle cell disease. This story was covered by Leadership, one of Nigeria's top newspapers, and explained that Dr. Khaliru Alhassan the Supervising Minister of Health commented that “Nigeria has the highest prevalence of Sickle Cell Disease in the world with 40 million Nigerians carrying the genes.”

The information is explained that that “the country has an infant death rate of 100,000 annual and sickle cell represents 8% of that.” Despite the number being low it is much lower in other nations. There was other startling information shared in the article not just about Nigerian statistics but world statistics as well. That “100 million people in the world are affected and that 50% of sickle cell deaths are those with the most sever of cases.” Another interesting point that was made is that “sickle cell is among the top ten communicable disease causing significant deaths.”

There was good news the Federal Ministry of Health in collaboration with experts planning on submitting an article that will guide prevention and control of sickle cell disease. These guidelines could include what was outlined by the article as “management of specific clinical problems associated with sickle cell disease and protocols for various therapeutic procedures. It will also facilitate uniformity and standardization of care across different disciplines.”


If you would like to learn more about the issue you can click the link below: http://leadership.ng/news/392085/nigeria-ranks-first-sickle-cell-disease-burden-worldwide-40m-cases


Good news for the city of New Delhi medicine this week. According to The Times Of India, a news agency mainly focusing on Delhi and New Delhi news, doctors from a private hospital have “performed a half matching bone marrow transplant on a patient suffering from sickle cell disease.”

A four year old boy by the name of Nathan Ekundayo was saved this week by Dr. Gaurav Kharya, senior consultant at Center for Bone Marrow Transplant at BLK Super Specialty Hospital.

According to the report Nathan was diagnosed with sickle cell “when he was one year old.” It was explained that over his short life has undergone “frequent hospitalizations.” But it wasn’t early last week that his condition became serious enough to warrant a surgery.

According to the article if the boy had not undergone the transplant “he could have soon died.” As of right now Nathan is alive and recovering from a life saving surgery.

If you would like to read the article you can find it here: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/delhi/Half-match-marrow-transplant-saves-kid/articleshow/45278597.cms

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