Committed to Johns Hopkins’ recommendations: Al Shehabi

Manama

 Bahrain is fully committed to implementing Johns Hopkins’ recommendations and this workshop is part of it, said Health Minister Sadiq Al Shehabi, while speaking to the media at the Sickle Cell Workshop held in Bahrain yesterday.    

 “We will continue our strategy to reduce the number of deaths caused by the Sickle Cell Disease (SCD),”said the minister.

 He said the new management in Salmaniya Medical Complex was very professional and that the ministry was fully satisfied with their performance.

 Speaking to DT News, Chairman of Bahrain Sickle Cell Society Dr Zakareya Alkadhem said, “The number of newborn patients is decreasing. But, it may take 90 years to completely eradicate this disease from Bahrain.”

 Meanwhile, he said they were facing two major problems before the four-member-team from John Hopkins Clinic in Baltimore evaluated their method of treatment and gave them recommendations.

 Firstly, Dr Zakareya said the patients were reluctant to take the drug because of its side effects and secondly, there were only three physicians who could prescribe this drug.

 One of their recommendations was to increase the use of Hydroxyurea drug.

 Dr Zakareya said they would create awareness among the primary physicians as well as the patients so that the physicians could recommend the drug and the patients could take it with confidence.

 There are almost five thousand registered SCD patients in Bahrain, but the exact number of patients is still not known. Last year 46 people died of this disease.

 Chief Resident Hematology and team leader for sickle cell disease, Dr Jaffer Al-Tooq, said the objective of the workshop was to provide better care to sickle cell patients.

 He said that through this workshop, they would train the Primary Care physicians so that the SCD patients would get treatment at the nearest health centre instead of rushing to the Salmaniya Medial Complex, which was already crowded.