SPECIALISTS in sickle cell disease (SCD) insist that most people born with this condition can survive and lead fruitful lives as adults if adequate care is provided from infancy.
It is this reasoning that led to Ghana adopting a National Newborn Screening Programme (NNbSP) for SCD which is to overhaul the management of the disease in the country through early screening and comprehensive care for people living with that condition.
To ensure the smooth implementation of this programme, health professionals selected from the Northern, Upper East and Upper West regions underwent an intensive training in the management of SCD, with much emphasis on newborn screening.
The training workshop, which took place in Tamale, the Northern Regional capital, helped to re-orient and up-date the knowledge of the health personnel on the management of SCD.
The Sickle Cell Foundation of Ghana (SCFG), which is the implementing institution of the NNbSP, organized the training in partnership with the Ministry of Health and Ghana Health Service.
The trainees included doctors, nurses, midwives, public and community health nurses, laboratory technicians and other allied-health personnel.
Areas tackled during the training programme included the screening, tracking and follow-up of newborns with SCD, interpreting results of laboratory tests for haemoglobin disorders, providing nursing services and providing patient education and support.
It is expected that the beneficiaries of this training would form core teams in their respective districts for comprehensive management of SCD in those areas.
They would also pass on the knowledge and skills to other health personnel at all levels of health care delivery in order to ensure that the proper management of SCD trickles to the primary level.
The newborn screening programme, which is being rolled out nationwide in phases, is a key intervention to address SCD in Ghana by ensuring that care is available for people living with SCD from early childhood.
Mr. Eddie Tettey, who is the Vice President for Finance and Administration of the SCFG, told the Daily Graphic that the training is very critical to sickle cell management in the country.
“We want health personnel in all health centres to be ready to provide adequate and professional care for babies who would be found to have SCD, when the newborn screening rolls out altogether,” he stated.
Mr Tettey, who is also the Programme Administrator of the NNbSP, said the Foundation’s expectation was that by 2015, newborn screening for SCD would be effective and efficient in all parts of the country.
“Our main objective is to have a situation where everyone with SCD or its related conditions, in Ghana, is properly diagnosed and offered education, counselling and modern medical and psychosocial services,” he further noted.
The President of the SCFG and Programme Coordinator of the NNbSP, Prof. Kwaku Ohene-Frempong also mentioned, in an interview, that newborn screening was an essential first step in tackling SCD.
“When we screen blood samples of babies, we are able to tell who is born with sickle cell disease and who is not. Some interventions can then be made to save those born with the disease from early complications that may arise when the disease begins to manifest,” he explained.
Prof Ohene-Frempong, who works in the United States at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, noted that one of the major causes of complications for children with SCD was infection.
He said one way to protect newborns found to have sickle cell from getting infection was to put them on antibiotics.
According to Prof Ohene-Frempong, it is estimated that about two per cent of babies born in Ghana have SCD.
“One per cent of newborns in Ghana are SS and 0.8 per cent are SC. So this population in addition to those with other forms of SCD constitutes about two per cent of the population,” he explained.
The professor however indicated that it is difficult to tell the percentage of Ghana’s population that is currently living with SCD because “we do not know how many of those born with the disease are still living.”
It is expected, therefore, that a successful implementation of the NNbSP would lead to an improved management of SCD in Ghana, which would ultimately reduce the number of complications and fatalities associated with the wrong handling of the condition.
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