The Significance of Sickle Cell Day

Hello friends! My name is Dr. Vikas Dua. I am a Pediatric Hemato-oncologist and a bone marrow transplant Physician in Fortis Memorial Research Institute, Gurgaon, India.

A pediatric hemato-oncologist looks at blood disorders from Day 1 of life to 18 years of age. Any person, or a patient having any blood disorder, whether it is a liquid tumor, any malignancy or any benign hematological disorder, a pediatric hemato-oncologist looks at and monitors all of them. In addition, we conduct bone marrow transplants for these diseases and we have colleagues who are adult Hematologists and who perform bone marrow transplants in adults.

So, today we are going to talk about sickle cell anemia and as we all know that on 19th of June every year we celebrate Sickle cell day. So, why do we celebrate sickle cell day? The reason for the same is to create awareness and to make people understand, what sickle cell disease is?, and what are the newer advancement in the treatment of sickle cell anemia and what is the permanent cure for sickle cell anemia.

Majority of us do not know that with bone marrow transplant, Sickle cell anemia can be cured forever. People from different parts of Africa like Nigeria, Ghana, Uganda, Zambia, Tanzania and many other countries in Africa suffer frequently from sickle cell anemia. There is a high prevalence rate for the disease in these countries. People call us, text us, e-mail us and ask- Oh really! Can bone marrow transplant cure my child of sickle cell anemia? So, the answer to that is yes. If we do a bone marrow transplant for sickle cell anemia, the child can be well forever.

So, on this sickle cell anemia day, I want to give a message to all those families who have these warriors in their families, who are suffering from this disease called sickle cell anemia that with the bone marrow transplant they can be permanently cured. Thank you very much friends.