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Nurses in training targeted for sickle cell edification
As a part of its sustained efforts to raise awareness about sickle cell locally, the Guyana Sickle Cell Association (GSCA) has plans to target the country’s Nursing Schools. And according to member of the Association and Former Chief Nurse, Grace Bond, a number of sensitisation sessions have already been conducted at the Georgetown School of Nursing in this regard.
This intensified mode of awareness, Bond said, has been engaged in recognition of the fact that sickle cell-related disorders are rarely addressed at an early stage within the local health sector. In fact, she noted that often is the case that persons are only enlightened about the disease when they suffer some related complication.
However, there are just a few local nurses (Bond included) that have been fully trained to recognise and address sickle cell-related disorders, Bond revealed, even as she emphasised the growing urgency to have nurses from the training level to be exposed to sickle cell edification.
“We have plans to target nurses through our continuing education programme, but we have also done some work at the School of Nursing…I have already had talks with the third year students but we are hoping to talk with all of the students, even those who have passed through the School of Nursing. We are also hoping to increase awareness by talking to the general public,” Bond noted.
“We have to let the public know about sickle cell so that they can know how to care for themselves because it is not just about getting treatment in hospital. Treatment in the hospital is when you go into crisis and suffer from unbearable pain. But if they can be taught to minimise or prevent a crisis then they will not be going to the hospital as frequently.”
It is even more important, Bond said, that screening for infants be introduced sooner rather than later in local public health facilities. Through screening, health workers will be able to identify newborn babies who are more likely to develop the sickle cell trait. Bond explained that screening could start even before a child is conceived, whereby potential parents can be screened to determine whether they have the sickle cell trait and how possible it is for them to conceive a child with full-blown sickle cell.
A child can only have the sickle cell disease when two variant haemoglobin genes, of which one must be haemoglobin S, are inherited. One haemoglobin gene is obtained from each parent. Parents should be aware from an early stage that should they conceive a child with the sickle cell disease they should ensure that their child is properly immunised and kept warm and as far as possible, free from infections.
The latter, Bond asserted, has the distinct potential of prompting painful crises.
Bond, who was recently engaged in a fellowship in the United Kingdom through the Association of Guyanese Nurses and Allied Professionals (AGNAP), said that she was able to observe that the UK health sector has incorporated a prophylactic treatment process to combat the sickle cell related crises.
“They start the children on treatment such as Penicillin V and antibiotics as early as two months old to try to minimise the risk of them getting an infection.”
But all infections cannot be prevented, Bond noted, adding that should children become overwhelmed with an infection they can be taken off of the prescribed prophylactic treatment and be administered the normal treatment as required for the respective infections before the former treatment is resumed.
Children suffering from sickle cell could remain on prophylactic treatment until the age of 16, Bond pointed out.
Nurse Bond displays some sickle cell reading material
At present, the treatment of the sickle cell disease in Guyana is being regarded as “out-of-control” because persons are not even aware that they are suffering from the disease until they develop some form of severe pain or illness which requires that they be hospitalised. Compounding the existing challenges of addressing the disease is the fact that the blood test which is carried out to determine the presence of the disease is not routinely done at the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC). As such, there is an urgent need to introduce the test at the GPHC before expanding the service to other public hospitals across the country, Bond stated.
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