Sharing our expertise all over the world
Dr Yvonne Daniel, Viapath’s Lead Scientist in Special Haematology at Guy’s and St. Thomas’ Hospitals, is invited to Nigeria to input into workshops to help tackle Sickle Cell Disease in the country.
Cast your mind back to September 2014 and you may remember we brought you the story of Dr Yvonne Daniel, who visited Nigeria to continue rolling out a screening program for sickle cell disease (SCD) in newborn babies.
Yvonne was part of a delegation that travelled to the African country to train laboratory staff and implement proper protocols to help diagnose patients. In a country where SCD, which is a hereditary blood disorder, kills 50% of sufferers before they reach the age of 10, this is very important work indeed.
This time, Yvonne was invited at the request of the British High Commissioner to Nigeria to attend workshops spanning three days to discuss research into SCD, priorities for future research and how the profile of SCD can be increased to attract more funding.
Topics for discussion included using methods of screening that are affordable in West Africa, how to reduce the number of sickle cell births and how the disease varies across Nigeria and how this can be documented.
Invitations to this event were sent to a number of experts in this field around the UK - where the survival rate for SCD is around 96%.
Aiming to promote further collaboration between UK and Nigerian experts, the meeting was also attended by specialists from our partner organisations; Dr Baba Inusa from the Evelina Children’s Hospital, Guy’s and St. Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust and Stephan Menzel from King’s College London.
This highlights the expertise, not only of our people here at Viapath, but also within other organisations from King’s Health Partners, who we work so closely with.
Dedicated to helping patients
Yvonne’s expertise clearly shone through, as a colleague from the University of Nebraska who also attended the meeting, has since sent 500 dried blood spot samples to Viapath’s laboratories to be tested for SCD.
Such is Yvonne’s dedication, she will be flying off again at the end of July to spend 10 days in Tanzania where she will be assisting laboratory staff with SCD testing.
Check back to our website in early August for Yvonne’s full report on her time out there.
