Do you know about this ailment?

Tweet

Sickle cell syndrom is a genetic disease commonly found amongst Africans,Asians and people of these descents. When a child is being formed, it takes each of its two genes from either parents.The options are A,S ( and some variants of S) .If the child gets A from each parent , it ends up with an AA genotype, if A from one and S from the other parent, an AS child results and if S from each of the two parents, then the child would have an SS genotype. The S gene has a tendency to curve into a sickle-like shape when under stress due to lack of nutrition, oxygen etc. These sickled cells clog passages in the blood vesels and cause pain to the person.The result of this is that the SS person often feels greater pain under the same level of sickness or even ordinary stress than other persons. If these stress conditions persist,the blood cells actually die off, resulting in anaemia.Every person will ultimately reach this anaemia-producing situation if stressed long enough but it is known that the sickle cell blood lives for a shorther period than other blood types(about a third of the lifespan of non-sickling cells) In Africa, the lot of sicklers is made worse particularly by the prevalence of malaria, because the SS anaemia forms a terribly deadly combination with malaria. I am particularly disturbed by the fact that many people even here in Africa seem to know little and care very little about knowing the nature of this disease. I was myself in the same situation until the disease forced itself unto my attention. Amongst many other convinctions, I believe that this disease is the basis of the notorious Abiku syndrom which occassioned the poems of Wole Soyinka and J.P Clark. Please, let us share knowledge about this disease and how to manage it. I am still having to cope with it, but I am more pained by seeing how lives are lost on a regular basis to this disease for basically the reason of lack of knowledge. Dudumodu