They Lost Three Daughters to Sickle Cell. Can They Save a Fourth?
The New York Times
About 150,000 babies are born each year in Nigeria with sickle cell, a deadly disease. Tens of thousands of them die annually before their fifth birthdays.
KANO, Nigeria — The hip pain from sickle cell disease was so intense that Sadiya Haruna, age 9, could not walk, so she rode on her sister’s back. She settled among dozens of children and mothers on a concrete bench outside a clinic here in northern Nigeria.
Her anguished mother, Mariya Haruna, sitting beside her, had already seen sickle cell squeeze the life out of three of her daughters. She was frightened that Sadiya was hurtling toward the same fate.
Sadiya’s mother was determined to ease her daughter’s bouts of agony, caused by crescent-shaped — or sickled — blood cells clogging her vessels. And she hoped the staff of the pediatric sickle cell unit at Murtala Mohammed Specialist Hospital in Kano would have answers. As a public hospital, it is the only place many families can afford to take their children to get treated for a disease that can cause severe pain, organ failure and strokes.
