Cameroon Sickle Cell Patients Say They Can Live Longer
Voice of America
YAOUNDE, CAMEROON - Hundreds of sickle cell disease patients in Cameroon are using World Sickle Cell Day, June 19, to teach their neighbors that people with the disease can live longer, contrary to popular beliefs and stigma that label them as witches who must die before the age of 24. Cameroon says 20% of its 25 million people are carriers of the gene primarily seen in people of African descent. The government is also telling hesitant sickle cell patients to accept vaccinations against COVID-19.
At least 300 sickle cell patients and their family members turned out at the Cameroon Baptist Convention hospital at Etoug-Ebe, a neighborhood in Cameroon’s capital, Yaoundé. Hospital officials said hundreds of other sickle cell patients came out in the coastal city Douala and the English-speaking western towns of Buea, Bamenda, Kumba and Kumbo to observe the 2021 World Sickle Cell Day. Fifty-five-year-old Ashu Egbe was diagnosed with sickle cell when he was seven months old. He says he is living proof that people can live long with the disorder, in which red blood cells contain an abnormal type of hemoglobin. 'I am a sickle cell sufferer, I usually tell people that I am a sickle cell warrior because we go through the challenges of life, the pains and we think that we are warriors, we are overcomers," Egbe said. "The younger ones should be courageous, avoid extreme colds or extreme heat and drink plenty of nonalcoholic fluids. You have a normal diet of good vegetables and then you have continuous follow up. You can live a good life."Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei performs prayer at a funeral for victims of a helicopter crash that killed Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, Foreign Minister Hossein Abdollahian and others, in Tehran, Iran, May 22, 2024. (West Asia News Agency via Reuters) Mourners attend a funeral for victims of the helicopter crash that killed Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and others, in Tehran, Iran, May 22, 2024. (West Asia News Agency via Reuters) Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, right, offers his condolences to Iran's caretaker president, Mohammad Mokhber, and other officials in Tehran on May 22, 2024. (Iraqi Prime Minister's Press Office via AFP)
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