LAGOS – A consultant hematologist, Prof. Suleiman Akanmu, on Monday called for adequate public awareness on the dangers of hemophilia so as to reduce early deaths among infants.
Hemophilia is a rare hereditary bleeding disorder, predominantly in males, in which blood cannot clot normally following a injury or cut.
Akanmu, Head, Department of Hematology and Blood Transfusion, Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH), Idi-Araba, made the call in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN).
According to him, many male children with hemophilia die soon after birth due to post circumcision bleeding.
“Hemophilia is not as well-known as sickle cell disease, but it’s a disease that affects predominantly males. “We do not know the true prevalence because a lot of people that we are supposed to count as suffering from hemophilia actually die soon after birth. [eap_ad_2] “They die soon after birth because of post circumcision bleeding and a lot of these things actually occur in our villages.
“We have a lot of local surgeons who do these things and the male child just perish like that and we do not have an account of how much of these things are actually happening.
“That is why we say we need to come out.
“We need to talk about this disease, we need to enlighten the population. We need to let people know that hemophilia is out there and male births are dying in villages and we are attributing their deaths to something else.
“So it’s a disease that needs real enlightenment.”
He stressed the need for collective action to stop needless deaths as a result of the disease. (NAN)[eap_ad_3]
