Lima, OH (WLIO) - September is Sickle Cell Disease Awareness month, and a local community center is trying to raise just that for the Lima area. This is the 2nd time that the Bradfield Community Center and the West Central Ohio Sickle Cell Coalition have hosted a forum to talk about the most prevalent rare disease that is hardly discussed, even between doctors and patients.
“People don’t realize is that people can have the trait or people can have the disease and it has gone undiagnosed,” says Kesha Drake, the Dir. of Bradfield Community Center.
“Sickle Cell is a genetic disorder that is passed down from parents to children,” adds Annie Ross-Womack, Ex. Dir. Ohio Sickle Cell, and Health Association. “So, both of the parents must carry a Sickle Cell trait or another hemoglobin trait, or an abnormality in the genetic disorder to link together with the Sickle Cell trait to form a form of Sickle Cell disease.”
Red blood cells contain hemoglobin, a protein that carries oxygen. Healthy red blood cells are round, but in people with Sickle Cell the blood cells are curved and can get caught in the blood vessels, causing people to have pain and other serious health problems. There are about 100 thousand people in the United States that have Sickle Cell disease and while it is associated mostly with African Americans, it is linked to other nationalities like Hispanics, Pacific Islanders, Asians, and people who are connected to countries around the Mediterranean.
“So, it is very important to know your hemoglobin status, to know which genes you carry. So, when you have children and you are passing those genes down, it is very important to understand your genetic makeup,” adds Ross-Womack.
And left undiagnosed the disease can cause serious problems in kids and especially athletes.
“You know when they are thirsty, and coaches think they are just being soft. But that actually can be because they have the trait or have the disease, Sickle Cell, and it's just gone undiagnosed. So, a lot of time when you see kids or you hear about them having heart attacks and things like that it is because they had Sickle Cell and it had gone undiagnosed,” adds Drake.
If you would like more information about the disease, you can log on to www.ohiosicklecell.org.
