CALL TO INCREASE SICKLE CELL SCREENING

 THERE is yet another call coming from the Hope Foundation for a higher level of screening in Barbados as it relates to sickle cell disease.
This as the organisation celebrated World Sickle Cell Day with a ‘Mix and Mingle Picnic’ on Sunday at Drill Hall Beach.
In speaking to The Barbados Advocate, President Shelley Weir MBE explained
that with the condition becoming recognised by the United Nations in 2008 as a major public health concern, Barbados is well behind the curve when it comes to diagnosing the disease.
“Sickle Cell really is of major interest to us and we try on this day to raise the awareness through the Orange Ribbon Drive. Today we have come to hang out – it is one of the first things we are doing since the whole lockdown with COVID,
but as our theme for this year states, we are trying to shine the light on sickle cell. And when we ask for the light to be shone on sickle cell, we are ask- ing that every new-born baby be screened for sickle cell – it still does not happen as a mat- ter of course in Barbados – and that special attention be paid to the pain experienced by ‘sick-lers’,” Weir said, before going on to add that Barbados was one of the few countries in the
Caribbean not screening at birth.
With June 19th marking what would have been the 100th birthday of first person to be di- agnosed, Walter Clement Noel, a Grenadian who attended Harrison College, Weir noted that the Foundation had been asking for widespread screen- ing since 2001.
With the cost still relatively low at US$20, the Hope Foundation president said that education and awareness were the best weapons in the fight against the disease since there was no data on how many Barbadians suffered with the ailment.
“What we have had to do is to encourage young people, if they are planning a family, to know what their status is because if both people have a trait, chances of the child having full sickle cell are great.

The only thing we can do is educate people. I would hope that the same way that other things are screened for at two weeks after birth, that sickle cell would also be included. It is almost inhumane for a child to be crying and the mother cannot automatically exclude that this child’s source of discomfort could be pain because of sickle cell because that baby cannot speak for itself.”