The House of Representatives is seeking ways to put an end to the death of over 100,000 babies from Sickle Cell in Nigeria every year.
This statistics from the World Health Organisation (WHO) makes Nigeria number one sickle cell endemic country in Africa and a country with the highest burden of sickle cell disorder in the world, as over 40 million Nigerians are carriers of the sickle cell gene.
Statistics have also shown that Nigeria has the largest population of people with sickle cell disease in the world with over 150,000 babies born with it every year. However, there is no single legal framework in Nigeria for the prevention, control and treatment of the disease.
To address this lacuna, the House Representatives is working on a bill for an Act to establish the National Agency for Sickle Cell Disease and other related diseases for treatment, prevention, control and management in Nigeria.
The bill which has passed through first and second readings on the floor of the House was, on Wednesday, subjected to a public hearing at the National Assembly.
Sponsored by Bamidele Salam (PDP-Osun), the bill seeks to improve the lives of people suffering from sickle cell disease, recognise the disease as a serious and debilitating illness, and allocate new resources to monitoring, researching and treating it.
Bill particularly seeks to: “formulate and implement policies, guidelines and strategies on sickle cell disease and other heritable blood disorders; facilitate the engagement of all tiers of government and all sectors on issues of sickle cell disease and other heritable blood disorders prevention, care and support.
“Advocate for the mainstreaming of sickle cell disease and other heritable blood disorders interventions into all sectors of the country; promote, improve and support research and learning in sickle cell disease and other heritable blood disorders”.
While declaring the public hearing on the bill and an Act to establish a Federal Medical Centre Hong in Adamawa, the speaker of the House, Femi Gbajabiamila said both proposed legislations were in line with the 9th Assembly’s legislative agenda to make interventions in the health sector.
“We set out a legislative agenda that outlined the scope of our governing ambitions…In that document, we made commitments to improve access to healthcare services for all our nation’s people, increase funding for healthcare research, improve the mechanisms for training and providing for our healthcare professionals amongst other things”, Gbajabiamila said.
Minister of Health, Osagie Ehanire in his presentation, said the department of public health within the Federal Ministry of Health which currently deals with non-communicable diseases be strengthened to continue with the work which falls within its mandate.
The minister, who was represented by the director of hospital services in the ministry, Adedimpe Adebiyi, stressed the need to improve access to quality healthcare services.
On the Federal Medical Centre Hong, the minister said: “The policy for establishing Federal Medical Centre is for it to be established in states where there are no federal teaching hospitals. Currently, the above policy is accomplished and it is inadvisable for the Federal Government to engage in proliferation of tertiary health institutions”.
The sponsor of the bill for the establishment of the Federal Medical Centre, Hong, Yusuf Yakub (APC-Adamawa), said indigenes of the area had in 2019 mobilised healthcare infrastructure and equipment from government and the private sector to upgrade an existing health facility that can accommodate the proposed federal medical centre.
