By Asmau Ahmad with Agency Report
Mr Ebenezer Adeleye, the Programme Coordinator, Sickle Cell Foundation Nigeria (SCFN), Idi-Araba, has called for intensive indigenous research into Sickle Cell Disorder (SCD) to mitigate the burden of the disease. Adeleye, in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Monday in Lagos, said that Nigeria still carried the highest burden of the disease in the world.
“Our most important plan for this year is to do more research on some of the causative factors of sickle cell disorder.
“The place of research cannot be over emphasized, because if you look at the United States, since the early 1970s, the government has committed money for sickle cell research.
“And, it is from those researches that we have the body of knowledge about what to do with sickle cell now.
“And, that is what we even use in Nigeria, and yet, Nigeria has the largest burden of people living with the condition.
“So, we really need to do research here for us to understand that there may be some environment specifics to the condition that we still don’t understand.
“We need to understand what causes the pain. We need to understand how it can be better managed.
“We are hoping that we get the needed support to be able to implement them with funding, we could do a lot.
“A lot of money go into funding HIV/AIDS initiatives, if we could have a quarter of that, we will do a lot to ameliorate the problem of SCD in Nigeria.”
