Health Initiative
Sickle Cell Disease (SCD) is a genetically inherited disorder of red blood cell haemoglobin. It is the most common genetic disease seen in black people worldwide and one of the largest populations is born in Nigeria where about 150,000 babies are born with sickle cell each year. About 120,000 of these babies will die before their fifth birthday due to lack of proper method for diagnosis, lack of public awareness and knowledge of the condition, inadequate health and social care to prevent and treat associated complications. In contrast 300 babies are born with SCD in the UK and 1900 in the US annually and in both countries all newborn babies are offered routine testing through a national neonatal screening programme.
New born screening enables parents to be informed of their child’s diagnosis and educated about risk factors to avoid and actions to take in order to reduce or prevent handicap, mortality and morbidity, for example, by enrolling the child in a health care programme and providing simple prophylactic treatments.
Nigeria’s growth rate is approximately 3.2% hence the number of babies born with SCD will continue to increase proportionately. With a high infant mortality rate and since there is no social welfare system available many people in Nigeria perceive that producing a large number of children will be the insurance policy for their old age. If infant mortality is reduced childbearing couples are more likely to consider reducing their family size to a sustainable and affordable number, enabling them to take better care of a fewer number of children.
A sustainable newborn SCD screening programme will make a significant contribution to reducing the infant mortality rate in Nigeria, because the mortality rate of children with SCD contributes to the significantly high mortality rate in the country.
National Sickle Cell Center, Lagos
NLI is collaborating with the National Sickle Cell Foundation to raise funds to help equip a national diagnostic and screening laboratory in the newly built Sickle Cell Foundation Centre in Lagos. We also hope to establish a hospital based neonatal screening program in three major cities in Nigeria, possibly Lagos, Enugu and Abuja.