Why you shouldn’t stigmatize against persons with sickle cell anaemia

As the world marks the ‘World Sickle Cell Day’ on the 19th June of 2020, Dr. Grace Naa Amoh, a medical officer at the Ghana Institute of Clinical Genetics (Sickle Cell Clinic), has cautioned against the stigmatization against people living with the sickle cell disease.
Speaking in an interview with Brown Berry on the Ryse N Shine show aired on YFM, she explained that it is no fault of sickle cell patients that they are living with the disease.
“It is very unfortunate that we stigmatize people with sickle cell. Someone getting sickle cell is by no fault of theirs”, she said.
She explained that the sickle cell disease is a genetic disease where a person inherits the sickle cell traits from both parents.
In illustrating her point, she noted, “A lot of times, the typical scenario we will see is a healthy carrier father and a healthy carrier mother probably because they did not know their genotype got married and had an innocent child with sickle cell”.
She further advised that to avoid such situations, it is important that people know their sickle cell status before getting married or having children. “If you check and you are a carrier you know and you are informed in selecting your partner”, she added.
Sickle cell disease is a group of disorders that affects haemoglobin, the molecule in red blood cells that delivers oxygen to cells throughout the body. People with this disorder have atypical haemoglobin molecules called haemoglobin S, which can distort red blood cells into a sickle, or crescent, shape.
By: Alberta Dorcas N D Armah