By News Writing & Reporting (MAC 201) Group One
The Theatre and Film Arts Department in partnership with the Advancement Office of the university of Jos has held a two-day Sickle Cell Anemia awareness campaign.
Entitled “The Opener” the campaign held at the Abuja, Village and Medical Students hostels involved a combination of drama and lectures to deliver messages on siècle cell anemia.
At the beginning of each presentation at the various hostels, an explosive and educative drama was staged by the Theatre and Arts Department followed by question and answer sessions.
The Resource Person for the programme, Dr. Kenneth Enwerem, of the Omega-Care Foundation, Jos, said there are a lot of misconceptions about the disease which makes an enlightenment campaign imperative.
He said sickle cell is a genetic disorder that occurs when blood cells are sickle shaped, hence the name, adding that crisis in sufferers sometimes caused by stress and emotional imbalance can be managed with proper care.
At the Medical Hostel there was an interactive session between the medical students and the doctor on the possibility of couples with haemoglobin genotypeAA + AA giving birth to a sickle cell anemia (SS) child.
Dr. Enwerem attributed it to the likelihood of error in genotype testing saying, “there is a three to five per cent chance of error in genotype testing when carried out with Hemoglobin Electrophoresis even with the right buffer and all other necessary factors available.”
“With high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), Isoelectric focusing (IEF), there is 0.1 percent chance of error and 99.9 percent accuracy”, he added.
The campaign which is sponsored by late Senator Gyang Dantong and family and facilitated by Dr. Reuben Embu and Mrs Hanatu Dantong, both of the Theatre and Film Arts Department, is designed to educate students on the subject matter and avert a sickle cell generation.
The campaign advocates premarital genotype determination/testing and genetic counseling to ensure that intending couples make informed reproductive decisions.
