Dakar, Apr 19 (APS) – Prophylactic treatment for hemophiliacs is free for around 40 patients in Senegal, revealed the director of the National Blood Transfusion Center (CNTS), Professor Saliou Diop.
“It’s been a treatment that’s been available in the world for three years, but we’ve had it here in Senegal for a year and a half and it’s totally free,” he said in an interview with APS. , on the eve of last Monday’s celebration of World Hemophilia Day.
This treatment is extremely expensive, but thanks to partners from the CNTS and the World Federation of Hemophilia, it is currently free for patients followed in health structures, welcomes the hematologist.
He is delighted that he has “changed a lot”, because he now has a preventive vocation. ”It is no longer an intravenous treatment on demand, but a subcutaneous and more important treatment. It’s that we are no longer waiting for the person to bleed, we are doing prophylactic treatment,” he said.
The interest lies according to him in the fact of producing the missing protein. People suffering from hemophilia are indeed confronted with the lack of a protein: ”factor 8 or factor 9”. Dr. Diop ensures that it is possible today to “produce this protein”, the treatment consisting in “replacing” it.
According to him, “prophylaxis has become the standard treatment for haemophilia once every two weeks or once a month, to prevent the occurrence of infections”. “The goal of prophylaxis is to prevent disability,” he said.
Coming back to care, he indicated that it “is organized by decentralizing care”. Thus, for hemophiliacs who are in regions such as Thiès, Louga, Saint-Louis, Touba and Ziguinchor, doctors and biologists have been trained and the drugs made available to them, free of charge. The sick are no longer obliged to come to Dakar, he assures us.
He believes that ”care begins with education”. And hemophilia being “a fairly rare disease”, in the event of the discovery of a new case, the CNTS takes “at least two hours to explain to the family the disease, the situations, how the decision is made. in charge”.
“This basic education is extremely important. During this session, they are given a notebook that allows them to have more information. It is to ensure that the patient or his family takes care of himself and constitutes a relay”, he justifies.
175,000 to 200,000 FCFA to stop bleeding
The cost of the treatment, underlines the head of the hematology department of Cheikh Anta Diop University, is “out of reach of the purchasing power of the Senegalese”. “A 10 kg child who bleeds needs 250 units. The box will cost 175,000 to 200,000 FCFA for bleeding, while he can bleed five days out of seven,” he said.
He specifies that the management of emergencies requires three million available units. He hopes to have at least a million units with the World Federation of Hemophilia, the rest to be filled by the State. He estimates that “an annual budget of 500 million FCFA would make it possible to treat all hemophiliacs in the country”.
Pr Diop revealed that coagulation factors are now on the list of priority drugs of the National Supply Pharmacy (PNA).
Concerning the mortality linked to hemophilia, the specialist notes that “the rate has plummeted with the products available”, the care also being provided today in the regions. The problem, however, is that there is underdiagnosis with patients dying early without ever being lucky enough to have had access to free treatment.
In Senegal, the smallest haemophilia patient is just two years old and the oldest is 66 years old. Pr Diop ensures that the cases are followed very early with an awareness that works “very well”, a situation which explains the good life expectancy observed today among hemophiliacs.
SKS/ADL/ASG/OID
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