‘Mass awareness, donation keys for countering thalassaemia’

Islamabad : Medical experts Thursday underlined the need for creating mass awareness on Thalassaemia as children are suffering from thalassaemia every year and we need to take serious measures to address this issue by educating people about the causes, prevention and blood donations for this disease, which is the best possible way to save generation.

Talking to a news channel, Project Director (JSF) Colonel (r) Tauqir Abbas suggested the male and female youths to go for detailed blood tests to find out symptoms of possible emerging of thalassaemia before getting married to prevent giving birth to an infant with thalassaemia. Prevention is the only measure that can drastically reduce the incidences of severe blood disorders, he added.

He said helping the thalassaemia suffering children is the collective responsibility of all the stakeholders of the society as lives of thalassaemia children depends on blood transfusion.

He also appealed to youngsters to come forward for blood donation to thalassaemia suffering children to save precious lives.

He said almost 70 private sector organisations were working for Thalassaemia patients.

“There is no alternative to giving blood to the thalassemia patients, he said, adding that there is no alternative to take precautionary measures to avoid its transmission of thalassemia to unborn babies.”

Another thalassemia specialist, Dr Shazia Aslam explained that thalassemia causes complications like bone deformities, iron overload, cardiovascular illnesses, heart palpitations, enlarged liver, jaundice, enlarged spleen, enlarged bones of cheeks or forehead and delayed puberty.

Thalassemia minor develops when one of your parents is carrier of this disease.

If this occurs, you probably won’t have symptoms, but you’ll be a carrier of the disease.

Some people with thalassemia minor do develop minor symptoms.

However, she said if both of your parents were carriers of thalassaemia, you have a greater chance of inheriting a more serious form of the disease. She stressed on creating awareness among the common people to increase their knowledge about the genetic disease to reduce the number of thalassemia patients.

She suggested to all the carriers of thalassaemia gene to meet a genetic counselor at the earliest to get proper treatment before being a parent of child or prevent the gene to get inherited to their child.