Preventable Morbidity and Mortality in Children with Sickle Cell Disease and Fever: the need for a National Protocol Preventable Morbidity and Mortality in Children with Sickle Cell Disease and Fever: the need for a National Protocol Children with sickle

Abstract

Preventable Morbidity and Mortality in Children with Sickle Cell Disease and Fever: the need for a National Protocol Children with sickle cell anaemia and its variants are at much higher risk than normal for morbidity and morbidity. This is due to the complications associated with sickle cell disease of which overwhelming sepsis is the most common. This problem has been recognized for at least, 30 years. Furthermore, as developing countries struggle to meet the millennium goals and reduce the mortality in children younger than five years, the contribution of sickle cell anaemia to childhood deaths is likely to increase unless specific interventions are developed to target the disease. Each year, an estimated 200,000 children in Africa are born with sickle cell anaemia, and more than 70 percent die before the disease is diagnosed.' The incidence of bacterial sepsis in our affected population in Nigeria has been estimated to be as high as 60 percent with a case fatality rate of 25-35 percent. This number is not encouraging in the face of millennium goals and the vision of reducing the national child mortality rate, and it is therefore unacceptable.