A bill to prevent, control and manage sickle cell anaemia in Nigeria scaled second reading at the Senate on Tuesday.
One of the provisions of the Bill seeks to prevent persons who are carriers (AS and SS) of the diseased gene from marrying other carriers.
The bill, sponsored by Sam Egwu, also seeks to curb preventable massive deaths and avoidable hardships caused by the disease.
This, the sponsor said, will be achieved by placing a statutory duty on the federal government to engage in and encourage the prevention, control and management of the occurrence, spread and effect of sickle cell anaemia.
Statistics
Thousands of the Nigerians are under the grasp of the deadly disease.
Experts have said the disease prevails in the country because of the wrong matching of conflicting genotypes in marriages and procreation.
Sickle cell anaemia is known for distorting the red blood cells which mostly result in severely painful blood clots and is among the top genetic haemoglobin disorders.
The genetically inherited disease which can also lead to death troubles a little less than five per cent of the global population. But for people whose origins can be traced to Africa, the risk is higher.
While over 300,000 babies globally are born with severe sickle cell disease, 75 per cent of that number are born in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Nigeria carries 66 per cent of the burden in the region, the American Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) states.
According to a report from the World Health Organisation (WHO), 24 per cent of the Nigerian population are carriers of the mutant gene and the prevalence of sickle-cell anaemia is about 20 per 1,000 births.
