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Olufunke Adesuwa Akiyode
Boston University

 

     

Women, Sickle Cell Disease and Reproductive Health and Human Rights

Sickle Cell Disease is an inherited disorder of the blood that causes chronic destruction of red cells, episodes of pain, vulnerability to infections, organ damage and in some cases early death. Sickle Cell Anaemia afflicts about 80,000 African Americans and about 20% of the West African population is affected with the disease, this shows that the disease is a major health problems in Africa; about 4 Million Nigerians have Sickle Cell Disease and hundreds of thousands die of it each year. Reproductive Health has been defined as a ‘state of complete physical, mental and social well being and not merely absence of disease or infirmity in all matters relating to the reproductive system and to its function and processes’ while reproductive health rights as defined in the Beijing Platform of action are certain human rights recognized in the national and international legal and human rights documents, including the basic rights of all couples and individuals to decide freely and responsibly the number and spacing of their children, and to have information, education and means to do so; the right to make decisions concerning reproduction free of discrimination, coercion and violence. Reproductive rights are therefore human rights which are inalienable, integral and indivisible part of universal human rights’. Women and the girl child bear the burden of providing care for the sick and dying. They also bear the burden of taking care of a sickly child. Since there is insufficient health care in developing countries, most care is done at home and therefore places intolerable burdens on women who are limited in ability to be economically productive. The girl child who traditionally assists the mothers in providing for the sick might be deprived a lot of things like Education. Moreover, it has been observed that most female patients with Sickle Cell Disease have bone pain crises around their menstrual period. This has been managed in a lot of ways. Some patients take pain –relieving drugs during the period even though the pain might persist and eventually lead to hospitalization. Other patients are managed with medications usually used for birth control; even though some pills have adverse effect on Sickle Cell Disease patients. The scourge of poverty in Nigeria has heightened the incidence of deaths resulting from Sickle Cells Disease in Nigeria; this is because a lot of Nigerian patients can not afford management of this disease due to high cost of drugs and hospital bills. More so, the survival rate of Sickle Cell Disease patients is remarkably higher in families with access to education, basic hygiene, good medical care and so on. This shows that there is a relationship between survival rate and the factors mentioned; and these factors are not readily available to Nigerian patients who are from average to low economic background. Although majority Nigerians are in this class range.


Africa Conference 2005: African Health and Illness
Convened by Dr. Toyin Falola for the Center for African and African American Studies
Coordinated by Matthew Heaton Webmaster, Technical Coordinator: Sam Saverance