Having sickle cell should not stop you from your dreams – Dr. Bankas

Dr. Bankas says sickle cell should not be a reason one can’t be whatever s/he wants

Over 500,000 people live with sickle cell in Ghana – Doctor

2 per cent of newborns have sickle cell disease - Managing Director of Sickle Life

The Managing Director of Sickle Life, Dr. Enam Sefekor Bankas, has dispelled views that persons living with sickle cell disease have limits on activities they can engage in.

According to Bankas, persons leaving with the disease can achieve anything they want to in life provided that they live healthily.

In an interview on GhanaWeb’s ‘The Lowdown’ progamme, Dr. Bankas said that her organization, Sickle Life is doing all it can to educate Ghanaians on the disease to stop the negative impressions of it.

“We are still working on it … We put out the information about the condition. We put our stories about people living with the condition and doing everything that everybody else is doing so that you know that yes you can have sickle cell disease and be anything and everything else and it doesn't have to be a limitation or be a reason why you can't be whatever you want to be,” she said.

Also, Dr. Bankas said that information on the disease is needed to help ensure that its transmission is reduced.

“In this country to make it more real for us we need to understand that every one in three people in this country has sickle cell trait. What that means is that you have the capacity or the ability to pass on their traits to your children. So, it's very important that we talk about sickle cell disease because with this information we know that the prevalence is high and so there's a large number of people who have this condition and there's also a large probability of passing on this condition,” she said.

She added that about 500 000 people live with sickle cell disease in Ghana with two percent of newborns born (15000 babies born) having the disease every year.

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