Actually, i wanted to post this earlier, but..yeah..there’re sooo many things I had to do at that moment, made me forget about this posting. *sigh*

Well, it has been a quite long time since i accepted a brochure, after I spent my ‘unoccupied’ time in BIP with him. The brochure gave me an information about this disease. Thalassaemia. I’m not a doctor, not also a pathologist, so that was my first time heard that kind of disease. That’s why I kept reading the brochure while I went home from the mall.

 

Thalassaemia, what’s that?

Thalassaemia adalah suatu kelainan darah yang terdapat di banyak negara di dunia. Kelainan darah tersebut diturunkan dari kedua orang tua kepada anak-anaknya, sehingga Thalassaemia digolongkan sebagai penyakit genetik utama.

 

In West Java, ( until April 2008 ) there are 495 people who suffer Thalassaemia!, where the 308 people came from the poverty.

 

Thalassaemia is divided into 2 categories:

1. Minor Thalassaemia, is the healthy people who may give the Thalassaemia to their children. If they are married to a normal people (has no Thalassaemia at all), they’ll bear normal children (50%) or the Minor Thalassaemia children (50%). But, if they are married to the fellow sufferer (has Minor Thalassaemia), they’ll bear normal children (25%), or the Minor Thalassaemia children (50%), or the Major Thalassaemia children (25%).

2. Major Thalassaemia, is a serious blood disease where the haemoglobin (the red cell) age is short relatively to the average of normal haemoglobin age (100-120 days). In the Major Thalassaemia, what goes on is haemoglobin level reduction, because of the haemoglobin destruction in the blood vessel. To regenerate the haemoglobin, the sufferer should do the continous blood transfusion, in the rest of their life.

 

The consequences of suffering Thalassaemia

- Lack of blood means lack of acid, may causes the body endurance decrement, and also the intellectual and emotional problem.

- The blood transfusion increases the ferric (zat besi) amount. The excess of ferric may damage the spleen, the heart, the kidney, the liver, and the other important organ. It may also cause the black skin and face.

- Generally, the sufferer may keep living until they’re 10 or 17-25 (without turning aside the great power of Allah).

- (Of course) the monetary crisis.

 

The treatment

1. Blood transfusion.

2. Ferric banishment, by Desferal Injection (it costs around 8 million rupiahs per month! ).

 

How we prevent?

The only way that we can do is not to get married with the Thalassaemia (Major nor Minor) people.

So, before a couple will decide to get married, they should check their selves up in the laboratory, to ensure that they’re free from Thalassaemia (and from the other genetic diseases).

 

Source :

The brochure I got from POPTI JABAR (Perhimpunan Orang Tua Penderita Thalassaemia Indonesia Wilayah Jawa Barat)

More information about Thalassaemia? Click here.