By Beryl Okendo

Beginning this month, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga Teaching and Referral Hospital together with other partners teamed up to create an awareness campaign geared toward ensuring that Sickle cell disease is fully eradicated and managed in the region.

More stakeholders are joining the noble venture, with the latest being the Kenya Haemophilia Association and the Sickle Cell Federation of Kenya which have now partnered with JOOTRH in the fight against the sickle cell in the Western region.

The partnership is geared toward establishing a comprehensive hemophilia clinic for diagnosis, treatment, and management of blood-related disorders which are still a menace in the region.

The already scheduled project is to include a fully equipped clinic at the Obama Children’s Hospital that would house a laboratory supplied with electro forensic machines that would help in testing and diagnosis of sickle cell among our patients. Laboratory reagents will also come as a package in the lab. In addition, physiotherapy equipment will also be available in the proposed clinic and will be used to manage the disease.

The availability of Hydroxyurea medication for adults and syrup for children is also among the problems that the partnership seeks to fix through the proposed project. This will lighten the burden for children since the JOOTRH pediatricians had been previously forced to prescribe non-syrup hydroxyurea to children seeking the medication.

A two weeks intensive training for pediatricians has also been planned to capacity-build JOOTRH medics to be specialized in the hemophilia clinic. The pediatricians will be taken through sessions that will enable them to administer the relevant physiotherapy and psychotherapy services to our patients.

Patients will be taken through regular counseling before and after screening for the sickle cell within the proposed facility. Group counseling and social support are also proposed to be done in the facility through the sickle cell clinic proposed.’

With the existing newborn screening for sickle cell available at JOOTRH, the work at the facility will be a step in the journey towards the total sickle cell eradication plan that will take miles of continuous action to achieve.

The implementation process of this project is underway and is scheduled to be completed by the end of November this year.

The proposal is expected to be a light at the end of the tunnel for sickle cell survivors and children and will go all the way to ensure that their plight is heed to.