Being in love is a major defining thing in our lives. Despite being surrounded by loved ones yet, when we find someone to spend the rest of our life with, we say we are in love.
It is important with all the scientific advancement of this century that marriage is not only validated by love or feeling but also by compatibility in genotype.
1 in every 4 Nigerians carry the sickle gene. That's 25% of our total population.
Here are my simple guidelines towards knowing and applying your genotype.
1. Simply request for the test in a medical laboratory or make a request for it in your family hospital.
2. It is a very cheap test to do almost anywhere in the world.
3. Please do not rely on the genotype you did to gain admission. Many of these tests are not well conducted because they think you only needed something for admission purposes. This is based on my little clinical experience
4. Do the test at a reliable centre before the passion of love gets to a point where you can't do without each other.
5. Only individuals with AA genotype can marry any other genotype generously.
6. Genotype AS, SC, SS can only rightly marry AA by medical calculations. This implies no person with a sickle gene 'S' is adviced to marry another with a sickle gene.
The passion to make this the topic of enlightenment is born out of patients I have encountered who suffered from sickle cell crisis. Parents who were in love later produced a child who is now in pain. Some did so out of ignorance, some out of rebellion against medical advices and so on. This is with so much financial consequences as they require medical support for life.
I hope you make a better decision before you say the two mysterious words- I do!
Thank you all for visiting guys and I hope you learnt something from this post. You can also check out my very first health tips post on the blog HERE. This guest post was written by my very good friend and colleague DR ALIU OLUWAPELUMI. You can also contact him for anything health related via his email aliu8019@gmail.com
