Sickle cell patients beg El-Rufai for drugs

People living with sickle cell anaemia in Kaduna State yesterday appealed to Governor Nasir El-Rufai to make their drugs available at public hospitals across the state.

They made the appeal when a sickle cell support group, Bako Youth Development Foundation, visited the Commissioner of Women Affairs and Social Development, Hafsat Baba.

The Executive Director of the foundation, Andy Bako, urged the state government to make drugs such as Paludrine, Folic Acid, B-Complex and multivitamins, among others, available in all public hospitals.

“One of the ways the state government can help people living with sickle cell anemia is to empower them to become self-reliant so that they can be able to foot their medical bills. Paludrine, which is one of the drugs we take everyday is unavailable in government hospitals and the cost in the open market is high for most of us. So also is the cost of laboratory investigations which includes blood transfusion,”

“Another challenge we face on a daily basis is the discriminatory attitude of health workers towards us as they sometimes ignore us, shout at us and make some derogatory comments at us, which is not good for our condition.

“Most of us are jobless because of the circumstances we find ourselves. Also because we have to take our drugs regularly and go to the hospitals when in crisis; we find it difficult to meet up with the bills due to poverty,” Bako lamented.

The commissioner said she would collaborate with her counterpart in the Ministry of Health and Human Services on how to come up with a memo that would a demand specific budget line for sickle cell patients.