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Africa is the global epicenter of sickle cell disease, a genetic blood disease that, while relatively rare, is devastatingly familiar across the continent. In Nigeria, the study suggests sickle cell is the most common, rudely 150,000 children are born with this disease each year.. In contrast, in the United States, about 100,000 people, most of whom are of African descent, suffer from it.
In this oil-rich country plagued by underinvestment in healthcare and deep income inequalities, doctors and nurses fight to keep children alive. One in two children with sickle cell in Nigeria dies before their fifth birthday. A study in The Lancet In September, which examines births and deaths from 2003 to 2013. Researchers estimate that 35,000 children under the age of 5 each died from sickle cell in those years.
Screening all newborns for sickle cell can drastically reduce premature deaths – but such testing is rare in Nigeria and Africa. Likewise, a three-drug regimen of 12 cents a day can reduce the death toll, but this too is often out of reach in Nigeria. living under $1.90 a day.
On the other hand, the United States, one of the richest countries in the world, has the technologies and capacity to better care for people with the disease. And life expectancy for them has improved in recent years as Americans with the disease. living into their 50s. Yet the American healthcare system, marred by racial inequalities, often unable to provide basic care for sickle cell people.
D., associate professor of pediatrics at Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital and Bayero University in Kano. “The inequality of survival in sickle cell patients in high-income countries versus low-income countries is unfair,” Shehu Abdullahi said.
The inconsistent income of Sadiya’s parents is not always sufficient to meet her medical needs. Sometimes the family has to choose medicine over food. During his almost weekly bouts of pain, he moans throughout the night and has trouble walking. Her mother worries that she may be like her daughters, whom she lost at the age of 9, 7, and 6.
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