In Pakistan, every year 5,000 to 10,000 children are born with thalassemia. Thalassemia is an inherited blood disorder in which body makes an abnormal form of hemoglobin. If either parents or any one of them are carriers of thalassemia then kids have 25 percent chance of inheriting major form of thalassemia. In order to prevent the disease from spreading among children, Health Minister Dr. Yasmin Rashid has announced that a pre-marriage thalassemia test would be made mandatory under a new law to be enacted soon. Such legislation is the need of the hour as children suffering from the disease have to undergo blood transfusion regularly and their parents remain in search of blood donors.
In thalassemi, a hemoglobin is the protein molecule in red blood cells that carries oxygen. The disorder results in excessive destruction of red blood cells, which leads to anemia. Anemia is a condition in which your body doesn’t have enough normal, healthy red blood cells. Children with thalassemia are born healthy. However, they are not able to make adult haemoglobin as they grow and usually fall ill due to anaemia before they are 18 months old. According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), thalassemia is most common among people from Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Greece and Turkey. It is too difficult to survive for a major thalassemia patient, because, a victim cannot survive without injection of blood. And he requires 200ml blood for the life of one month.
After making pre-marriage thalassemia test mandatory, many couple can avoid bearing children inherited with this deadly disease. One should not marry unless one verifies through medical check-up that one is not a victim of this disease. If everyone follows this rule, a day will come when we will get a society without any thalassemia patient.
