Sickle Cell patients hold confab

STORY: ROSE AMI KPOGOH, JAYEE INTERN AND SANDRA EFFAH, JAYEE INTERN
Sickle Cell patients last Monday, July 19, 2010 organized their third international conference on their achievement in Accra.
The program, which was attended by about 100 Sickle Cell patients – gave some of them the opportunity to share their life experiences.
One of such persons was Chief Superintendent Cosmos Kwasi Nti.
According to him, his life as Acheache patient [as Sickle Cell patients are described] has not been that different from someone who is not suffering from the illness.
Chief Supt Nti disclosed that he got to know that he was an ache ache patient in his late twenties, expressing that doctors who discovered it could not even believe that he could live with the disease to that age.
Supt Nti therefore used the occasion to advise Ghanaians not ignore persons with the sickle cell disease but rather draw them closer, adding that treating them with contempt would further dampen their spirit and aggravate their situation.
Madam Henrietta, another patient also shared her experience regarding how she had lived with the disease.
She said she started working at the age of nineteen and got married at twenty eight. She noted that in the wake of the fact that she was a sickle cell patient she currently has two kids and has lived with sickle for about 40 years now.
“People living with the sickle cell disease should always be pray and depend on the almighty God for everything,” Madam Henrietta advised.
Again, she encouraged all of the patients to make it a point to take their drugs and pay more attention to the dos and don’ts of the disease.
Among the people who graced the occasion were Professor Kofi Awoonor, the Chairman of the Council of State.