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Nigeria has called for coordinated global action against sickle cell disease (SCD), urging multilateral institutions, development partners, philanthropies, researchers and the private sector to align efforts towards expanding access to diagnosis, treatment and comprehensive care.
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Minister of State for Health and Social Welfare, Dr Iziaq Salako, said Nigeria bears the highest burden of SCD globally, with an estimated 150,000 to 180,000 babies born with the condition in the country every year, while more than 75 per cent of the nearly eight million people living with SCD worldwide are in sub-Saharan Africa.
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Salako outlined Nigeria’s efforts to strengthen SCD care, including newborn-screening programmes in Lagos, Kano and the Federal Capital Territory, six specialised centres of excellence, improved access to medicines and diagnostics, health-worker training and stronger referral systems.
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The minister said the newly launched OneSCD partnership must move beyond declarations to measurable implementation, insisting that a child’s chances of surviving and thriving with sickle cell disease should not depend on where the child is born or the financial capacity of the family.
September 25, (THEWILL) – Nigeria has called for stronger and coordinated international action to tackle sickle cell disease, as it seeks to place the condition higher on the global health agenda.
The Minister of State for Health and Social Welfare, Dr Iziaq Salako, made the call in New York at the inauguration of OneSCD, a global partnership established to advance equity and transform sickle cell care.
The event was held on the sidelines of the 81st United Nations General Assembly (UNGA81), with Nigeria joining Uganda, India, Jamaica and St. Kitts and Nevis in inaugurating the partnership alongside UNICEF, the World Health Organisation (WHO), Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and the World Coalition on Sickle Cell Disease.
Salako urged multilateral institutions, development partners, philanthropies, researchers and private-sector organisations to coordinate their efforts and invest in country-owned systems capable of delivering sustainable SCD care.
He particularly called for proven interventions to be moved from pilot programmes to national scale, stressing that the global response to the disease continued to be undermined by inequities, structural bottlenecks, fragmentation and years of inadequate prioritisation.
According to the minister, almost eight million people live with SCD globally, with more than 75 per cent of them in sub-Saharan Africa.
He said Nigeria carries the highest burden of the disease globally, with approximately 150,000 to 180,000 Nigerian babies born with SCD annually.
The scale of the burden, he said, had made the disease a national priority, with SCD now embedded in Nigeria’s child survival, maternal health, primary healthcare, non-communicable diseases (NCDs) and Universal Health Coverage (UHC) agendas.
“This is why OneSCD matters; to provide a global mechanism that connects political leadership, technical expertise, lived experience and financing behind country-led action”, Salako said.
Nigeria’s National Response
The minister said Nigeria, as a champion country in the OneSCD partnership, would continue to integrate early diagnosis and comprehensive care into primary, secondary and tertiary healthcare.
He said the government would strengthen national accountability through better data, measurable targets and sustainable financing, while ensuring that people living with SCD and their families remained at the centre of policy, programme design and evaluation.
Salako added that Nigeria would share implementation lessons from its national response and advocate for SCD to receive greater attention within global child health, maternal health, NCD and UHC programmes.
He said Nigeria had already begun strengthening its national response through a programme anchored in the Federal Ministry of Health and Social Welfare, supported by a National Sickle Cell Disease Steering Committee and national guidance for the control and clinical management of the condition.
According to him, pilot programmes in Lagos, Kano and the Federal Capital Territory are testing scalable newborn-screening approaches through maternity, immunisation, paediatric and primary healthcare services.
The government, he added, had also established and equipped six centres of excellence with high-performance liquid chromatography machines for specialised diagnosis.
Nigeria is also working to improve access to affordable diagnostic services and medicines, strengthen supply chains, train healthcare workers and establish referral networks for patients requiring specialised care.
Salako said SCD indicators were being integrated into national health information systems to improve monitoring and accountability.
He said the government was also pursuing sustainable financing through health insurance, domestic resources and responsible public-private partnerships.
The aim, he said, was to ensure that families affected by SCD did not bear the cost of care alone.
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Call For Action
Salako said the launch of OneSCD represented an opportunity to move sickle cell disease from a historically neglected area of global health to the centre of sustained international action.
“The launch of OneSCD is moving SCD from a neglected disease to the front burner,” he said.
He, however, cautioned that the initiative must produce concrete results rather than remain a ceremonial international commitment.
“It must be more than a ceremonial moment as we double up to move from talk attention to on-ground implementation attention”, the minister said.
He called for coordinated action, mutual accountability and measurable progress among participating countries and international partners.
According to him, the success of the partnership should ultimately be measured by whether people living with SCD can obtain timely diagnosis, appropriate treatment and continuous care regardless of where they live.
Salako said Nigeria was prepared to contribute its experience, learn from other countries and work with partners to advance the objectives of OneSCD.
Background
Sickle cell disease is an inherited blood disorder that affects haemoglobin, the protein responsible for carrying oxygen in the blood. It can cause severe pain episodes, anaemia, infections and damage to vital organs, with complications potentially beginning in childhood.
Early diagnosis, particularly through newborn screening, allows children with SCD to be enrolled into appropriate care before serious complications develop. Access to medicines, vaccinations, preventive care, specialist services and regular monitoring can also improve outcomes.
The burden of the disease is particularly significant in sub-Saharan Africa, where health systems in many countries face challenges in providing widespread screening, diagnosis and lifelong treatment.
Nigeria’s large annual number of births affected by SCD makes the country a major focus of global efforts to improve prevention, early diagnosis and treatment.
The OneSCD partnership brings together affected countries and international health organisations with the stated aim of strengthening political commitment, technical cooperation, financing and country-led implementation.
For Nigeria, the challenge now is to translate the programmes and commitments outlined by the government into sustained nationwide access to quality SCD services.
Salako said the desired outcome was a health system in which a child’s place of birth would no longer determine whether he or she survived and thrived with sickle cell disease.
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