Morbidity of Homozygous Sickle Cell Anaemia in Nigerian Children

The first African case of sickle cell anaemia in literature was a 10 year old boy from the Sudan (1). Reports that followed from other parts of Africa indicated that the disease was more severe in that continent than in other parts of the world. Survival to adulthood amongst African children with sickle cell anaemia was reported variously to be one per cent (2), 14 per cent (3) and 20 per cent (4). Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa, has the largest number of sickle cell anaemia patients in the world (5). Eastern Nigeria is inhabited mainly by the Ibos who number more than 8 million. The incidence of sickle cell trait and anaemia in Ibo pre-school children is 24.1 per cent and 1.6 per cent respectively (6). There has not been any detailed study of sickle cell anaemia in children in Eastern Nigeria. In this paper, a detailed analysis of the various symptoms and complications encountered during the follow-up of 125 children attending the paediatric sickle cell clinic at the University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital in Enugu, Eastern Nigeria, has been made in order to identify the causes of illness amongst these children and to establish the morbidity pattern of sickle cell anaemia amongst children in Easter