Free thalassaemia screening

Published on: Tuesday, October 17, 2006

Kota Kinabalu: The Health Department is providing free screening for the public to check for thalassaemia in an effort to ultimately bring the number of patients down in Sabah.

State Deputy Health Director (Public Health), Dr Mohd Yusof Ibrahim, said the public should take advantage of the free screening to determine whether they have the thalassaemia carrier genes.

"We are providing this free service to educate the public on the importance of checking their blood for any thalassaemia genes and to achieve our aim of reducing the number of patients in Sabah, which is the highest in the country.

"People can go to any nearest health clinics and Maternal and Child Health Clinics to benefit from the screening," he said.

Yusof said this to reporters after the handing over of a mock cheque for RM4,500 by Deputy Chief Minister, Datuk Yahya Hussin, to Thalassaemia Society of Sabah (TSS) at the Thalassaemia Treatment Centre in the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, here, Monday.

Also present were QEH Director Dr Zuraidah Ahmad Babji, Permanent Secretary of the Ministry, Michael Emban, and TSS President, Abdul Rahim Kahar.

Yusof said the Department is implementing the move as they have seen a successful effort in Cyprus where the number of thalassaemia patients in the country went down drastically with the provision of blood screening to the people.

"We launched the service last month and started the screening process in Kota Belud as a pilot project.

"The district was chosen as it is listed under a zone that has the highest number of cases in Sabah, apart from Tuaran. We will assure that the service will be available in other districts by next week," he said.

Once the blood sample is taken, Yusof said, the results can be known. But confirmation of results would take time.

"Once the person knows that he or she is a thalassaemia carrier, then the person can make early preparation or make decisions that concerns with marriage.

"Since the disease is genetically-inherited and if a carrier marries another carrier there is a 50 per cent chance that their children will suffer from the disease. But if only one of the couple is a carrier, then the chances of their children getting the disease is 25 per cent," he explained.

According to Yusof, the department will also start another programme to screen pregnant mothers in Keningau for early detection of the disease. "If the pregnant mother has the disease, then it is imperative for us to check the husband's blood.

"And if the result is positive, we will educate the parents on what to do and give them options, either to do screening on their baby or not," he said.

On the increase of thalassaemia patients yearly, he said: "I don't have the information in hand but I can tell you that there are always new cases every year and for this year, we have detected 300 people with the disease.

"Once we have started the free screening statewide, we would surely see many such cases come up."