‘North needs additional bone marrow transplant centres’

The North needs additional bone marrow transplant centres in view of the growing number of sickle cell carriers in the region, a member of the House of Representatives, Garba Datti Muhammad, has said. Datti who represents Sabon Gari Federal Constituency of Kaduna State had last year sponsored a motion on the floor of the House […]

The North needs additional bone marrow transplant centres in view of the growing number of sickle cell carriers in the region, a member of the House of Representatives, Garba Datti Muhammad, has said.

Datti who represents Sabon Gari Federal Constituency of Kaduna State had last year sponsored a motion on the floor of the House on the matter. But he told Daily Trust that since the passage of the motion, nothing was done.

He said if additional centres were established in the North, it would reduce the stress and hardship some sickle cell carriers go through in trying to access centres that are far away from their domains.

“We’ve done everything because of the growing population of sickle cell carriers, especially among the children, which has resulted in high mortality rate of children. Since there is no any known measure to cure this, the only thing that we have now is the stem cell marrow transplant, which is a remedy. It’s not a total or complete cure, but it’s a remedy to sickle cell patients.

“You’ll find out that most of the patients are from the Northern part of the country, in fact more than 65 percent of them. It’s more strategic to look at the critical places of where these things are. It will be more important. Here in the North, we need additional centres,” he said.

He said a number of his constituents are carriers of sickle cell and that he personally spend huge sums in assisting them to get medication.