Awareness, Perception and Attitude of Parents Towards their Children with Sickle Cell Disease in Paediatric Department Tertiary Hospitals, Rivers State

Abstract

Sickle cell disease (SCD) occurs due to a genetic mutation, a replacement of the nitrogen base thymine with adenine, which results in the substitution of glutamic acid with valine at the sixth position of the B chain on the short arm of chromosome. This study tried to investigate the awareness, perception and attitude of parents towards their children with sickle cell disease in Paediatric Department Tertiary Hospitals, Rivers State. A descriptive research design was adopted, with a population comprising of parents who have children with Sickle cell disease that came for check-up or were admitted were used. The instrument for data collection was a questionnaire which was distributed after using convenient sampling technique to select 313respondents.Data was analyzed using the Microsoft excel and Statistical package for social sciences (SPSS) version 25.0. Findings showed that all of the respondents 313(100%) have heard of Sickle Cell Disease. They had good perception towards the disease but their attitude was poor because 192(61.3%) of the respondents find it difficult to accept the responsibility of caring for the child. It was concluded that all intending would be couples should do a pre-marital screening test to exclude SCD. It is recommended that, health care workers should continue to create awareness on the dangers of sickle cell disease, SCD should be added in the curriculum and parents should assist their children to live a health promotive and preventive life style.

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