djulies

June 19 is the day fixed by the United Nations to commemorate the World Sickle Cell Day as a way to advocate and raise awareness of the sickle cell disorder. Ahead of that date on June 16, I joined the event tagged: Red Umbrella Walk by the Coalition of Sickle Cell NGOs in Lagos on a charity walk on the theme: SCD: A Walk for Hope. The walk started at the Teslim Balogun Stadium Surulere as early as 7am and was promoted by Taxify.

Some of the messages at the walk is to know your genotype before marriage, and also to screen all children at birth or soon after. Parents should be taught to understand that having a sickle cell child is not the end of the world, the child just need care and support. Also, the general public should be educated to know that sickle cell disease is not an Ogbanje, and the mindset of consulting  native doctors should be stopped. Families with sickle cell members should be encouraged to visit a clinical counselor on sickle cell matters or a medical doctor.

I’m glad I took part in the walk and I encourage each of us to talk to their neighbors and colleagues at home and work with the proper information on sickle cell disease. See more pictures below, hope you enjoy them because I personally had a lot of fun as you can see from my smiles.

Thank you all for reading.

16 thoughts on “My Experience Walking For Hope and World Sickle Cell Day 2018”

  4. Wow! What a commendable effort you have made. Thank you!

    As Francis Eghehan had previously written, in the world, sickle cell anemia has it’s highest population in Nigeria and 1 in 4 persons(25% of our population) is of AS genotype(carries the gene). That’s really on the high side. So counselling is very important both to people intending to marry and singles who indulge in premarital sex, because i have seen a case where a girl got pregnant an had to keep the pregnancy, but it resulted in a sickle-celled child.

    Sickle-cell anemia is the most preventable heath condition but it can be very difficult to manage as well. So people ought to take care.

    Well done for the walk. I hope you were able to reach many persons?

    1. Thanks Ako Eyo Oku.
      …. yes you are right sickle cell is the most preventable health conditions if couples can check their blood group before marriage and not start having illicit Sex, they can avoid it because the pain the child will go through during crisis might not be easy for both parents to bear..

Leave a Reply