From Olanrewaju Lawal Birnin Kebbi
The Kebbi State Sickle Cell Association (KESCA) has urged the State Government and other stakeholders to ensure the enactment of a law requiring a pre-marriage test to confirm couples’ genotype before their engagement.
KESCA said the test would ensure that the partners are compatible and able to give birth to children free of genetic blood disorders such as sickle cell patients.
A Hematologists, Dr Umar Garba Kangiwa, at the Federal University Birnin Kebbi Teaching Hospital (FUBKTH), who is in charge of KESCA members treatment, made the appeal while speaking with newsmen as part of the activities marking “World Inherited Blood Disorder Day “, in Birnin Kebbi.
Kangiwa, explained that “over 138,000 children are born annually with Sickle Cell disease because their parents did not undergo genotype test to know their blood group before marriage. Now in Nigeria, four Nigerians have one sickle cell carrier because they inherited it from their parents”.
According to him, symptoms Sickle Cell patients are likely to experience include body pains, swollen arms, legs, bone pains, chest pain, among others. Such individuals, he says, are prone to earlier stroke, restiveness, heart failure, kidney problem, renal failure, nasal bleeding, skull bursting and discolouration of their urine and ulcers.
While speaking on the prevention, Kangiwa said: “There should be a law mandating compulsory pre- marriage test to confirm the genotype of the husband and wife before their engagement. This will let them know their blood group. If the two of them are AA, AA, they are compatible,AA, AS too are compatible. But SS and SS are not compatible.
“This will prevent them from giving birth to children that are sickle cell patients popularly known as sickler. Prevention is better than cure because to be managing a sickle cell child required a lot of money, time and very stressful. That is why we want Kebbi State Government to enshrine it in a law that couple must undergo genotype test before their marriage “, he said.
In her remark, the Chairperson of KESCA in the state, Hajiya Hadiza Shanteli, who took the awareness campaign to schools in the state, told newsmen that they had gone to many schools in the state to sensitize pupils about the need to know their genotype so that they would be able to know whom to marry in future and prevent giving birth to blood disorder children.