A consultant paediatrician with St. Nicholas Hospital, Lagos, Dr. Adeseye Akinsete, has lamented the non-availability of morphine, a drug used under medical supervision to relieve pain in patients living with the sickle cell disease and cancer.

Akinsete said this on Thursday during a sensitisation programme organised by St. Nicholas Hospital, Lagos. At the event titled, Sickle Cell Anaemia and You, the paediatrician lamented the dearth of the pain-killing drug, while emphasising that prevention is still the best medicine against the disorder.

“There is the need to educate young pupils about sickle cell disease. Genotyping must be mandated in the junior secondary school so that they become aware much earlier. I use morphine for my patients but as I speak, there is no morphine in Nigeria. For the past two months, I have had to use pentazotine,’’ he said.

Akinsete said the non-availability of the substance meant that many patients were living with chronic pain. He further called on the Federal Government to import and make morphine available to hospitals.

“A child has between six and eight painful crisis episodes in a year. One painful episode causes them to lose four days of school. By the time that child is 25 year. It he or she does not receive adequate care, his or her heart could become twice as enlarged as that of the general population.’’

According to the World Health Organisation, about 300,000 babies are born every year with the sickle cell disorder. Some estimated 100,000 also die annually.

With medical advances however, patients living with the disease have a longer life expectancy.

“For a child born in 1984 with sickle cell anaemia, the best he or she can expect is to live to 2005, age 21 years. The reasons for the deaths have to do with infections, heart and kidney disorders, stroke, among others. But this is 2014, if a child is born with sickle cell today, I expect that child to live at least to 70 years,’’ he said.