World Sickle Cell Disease Patient Week

WSCDPW [World Sickle Cell Disease Patient Week]

There is such an event called “World Sickle Cell Day” which falls in mid-June every year.

For me who had two brothers and one sister (Victor Agbetey, Jerry Tei and Sussie Konotey-Ahulu) with hereditary cold-season rheumatism or hemikom as this has always been known in my Krobo Tribe in Ghana as the name for Sickle Cell Disease – one day in a year is not enough attention given to a very important problem.

Therefore, I am from July 12 2017, God willing, devoting a whole week to what I am calling WSCDPW ie World Sickle Cell Disease Person or Patient Week – the P is for Person or Patient for, as I hope to show you, some-one with sickle cell disease does not have to be going in and out of hospital regularly and frequently.

So there will be something for 12, 13 14, 16 17, 18 of July, with 15th July as a rest day. During the week matters concerning the Person with sickle cell disease will be discussed. My greatest credential is that from the day I was born several decades ago I was within my immediate family and the extended family surrounded by sickle cell disease relatives – this credential of mine is more important than the fact that as a doctor, I ran the largest Sickle Cell Disease Clinic in the world at the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital. And indeed more important than the fact that with Professor Linus Pauling (discoverer of the molecular pathology of sickle cell haemoglobin for which he got the Nobel Prize) on the platform I was chosen from among 24 Dr Martin Luther Jing Jr Foundation Award Winners for Sickle Cell Research world-wide, to deliver the Award Dinner Lecture in Philadelphia on Wednesday 31st May 1972, the title of my Award Lecture being “The Vital Difference Between Sickle Cell Trait and Sickle Cell Disease”. This does not compare with the fact that I knew about the sickle cell disease patient before I read Medicine.

So, the fact that I was born into a home where my sibllings, and cousins, and aunts, and uncles suffered from sickle cell disease is why I dare to introduce a WSCDPW or World Sickle Cell Disease Patient Week. My aim is not to indulge in controversy. My sole aim, and I mean this, my sole aim is to tell those like my brothers and one sister who inherited an abnormal haemoglobin from both father and mother to give them sickle cell disease – to tell them that they have inherited other genes from the same parents that can produce great achievement in their lives. I shall be greatly privileged to introduce some of these ACHIEVERS to the world, and to help those struggling at the moment with pain and other problems how to succeed. My 643-page book describes no less than 130 real patients and their problems and how they have succeeded or not succeeded in tackling them. Watch this space! My website www.sicklecell.md also has much information.

Professor Felix I D Konotey-Ahulu [whose parents were Traits for Abnormal Haemoglobin genes and whose 3 siblings had sickle cell disease].
MB BS MD(Lond) FRCP(Lond) FRCP(Glasg) DTMH (L’pool) DSc(Hon UCC) FGCP FWACP FTWAS ORDER OF THE VOLTA (OFFICER)
Kwegyir Aggrey Distinguished Professor of Human Genetics, University of Cape Coast Ghana, and Former Consultant Physician Genetic Counsellor Korle Bu Teaching Hospital Ghana and 9 Harley Street, London W1G 9AL.

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