Sickle Cell Disease: Its Prevalence, Knowledge and Attitude Towards its Control Measures among Pregnant Women in a Northern Nigerian Tertiary Hospital

Abstract

Introduction: Sickle cell disease (SCD) is the most prevalent haemoglobinopathy in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and has been declared to be a public health burden due to its associated morbidity and mortality. Nigeria is the most endemic SCD country thus prevention of the disease remains of utmost importance. Objectives: To determine the prevalence of SCD in pregnancy; and assess knowledge and attitude of the disease and its control measures among pregnant women. Methodology: A descriptive cross-sectional study involving 210 attendees of the antenatal clinic of Ahmadu Bello University Teaching Hospital Zaria. An interviewer-administered structured questionnaire was used to obtain information about socio-demographic characteristics, knowledge of SCD and attitude towards its control measures. Pregnant women with no evidence of genotype result had venous blood sampling and their blood samples were subjected to haemoglobin electrophoresis. The data was analyzed using SPSS version 21. The chi-square test was used to test associations between variables. The level of significance was set at p<0.05.  Results: The mean age of participants was 28 ± 6.3 years. Nearly half (48.6%) had tertiary education, the majority (70.5%) had a personal source of income and 23.3% were in consanguineous unions. The prevalence of SCD was 1.4% (3/210). Most (97.6%) were aware of SCD but only 53.8% had good knowledge of the disease. The majority of the participants (97.1%) were aware of premarital screening; 21% were aware of prenatal diagnosis and 68.9% of women at risk of having an affected child are willing to accept prenatal screening. Conclusion: One in every 100 pregnant women has SCD. A high level of awareness does not directly translate to good knowledge about the disease. Age and educational level were associated with knowledge of SCD. Premarital screening and prenatal diagnosis were the commonest and least known of the control measures.