World Sickle Cell Day

klstorytime
Jun 15, 2015
1 min read

June 19th 2015

The 63rd General Assembly of the United Nations declared June 19th as World Sickle Cell Day in 2008.

This day is to help increase awareness about sickle cell disease.

Sickle Cell Disease (SCD) is a disease where the body makes crescent or sickle shaped blood cells. Normally red blood cells are flattened round, a disc shape cells. Red blood cells contain hemoglobin. Hemoglobin is a protein that carries oxygen from the lungs to the rest of the body.

Sickle cells contain crescent shaped hemoglobin which causes the red blood cells to take on a crescent or sickle shape. These sticky and stiff sickle shaped red blood cells tend to block and/or inhibit blood flow to the body. This can damage an organ or cause pain. Plus the risk of infection can increase.

Life span of red blood cells

Normal red blood cells live about 120 days in the blood stream. They are produced in the marrow found inside larger bones in the body. Red blood cells (RBC) carry oxygen to the other cells in your body and remove carbon dioxide.

Sickle cells on the other hand only live 10-20 days. Unfortunately the bone marrow can not produce new RBC quick enough to replace the dying cells.

Who is at risk?

There are several ethnic groups whom this disease affects: people from Africa, South America, Central America, Caribbean Islands, India, Saudi Arabia and Mediterranean countries such as Turkey, Greece and Italy.

Treatment/Cure

Unfortunately, there currently is no cure. But treatment can help with symptom relief.