Xechem International Inc. (fka XKEM)

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Shomidamoni_The article below: i take no credit finding this, just passing it onto the readers here.

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Posted by: gaonmymind
In reply to: INVestorTrends480 who wrote msg# 25790 Date:7/13/2006 6:00:05 PM
Post #of 25929

NEW ARTICLE TODAY: Just Minutes Ago!!!

http://www.tribune.com.ng/14072006/edit.html
Hope for sickle cell patients
BABIES are blameless. But some babies, though clearly innocent, are given the death penalty. They are seen as foetal felons and their time on death row begins as soon as they are born. Many of them, when their minds free themselves from the morning mist of infancy and reach the warm climate of cognition, wish they were never born.

THEIR world is not kaleidoscopic, is compressed into that of red-hot pain. Unlike some murderers and rapists on death row, they have no remission, no reprieve. Their torment is not spent like a hurricane, the hurt hurtles on, clearing all herbal hurdles.

A sickle cell patient, puny though he is, has to contend with many vicious attackers. He is prone to stroke, kidney damage and an exceedingly painful condition in men called priapism. Sickle cell disease should own the patent for Viagra, though its cure for impotence impales men on a staff of suffering.

THE cause of sickle cell disease has been known for decades. It is caused by an errant gene. The gene is very well known, has long been caught in the searchlight of science. So why has it not been crushed like a rabbit confused and immobilised by a car’s headlamps?

THE disease is partial to blacks. This is supposed to be because they live in an area where malaria is endemic. This does not explain why African-Americans, far more than other races in the United States, are afflicted with the disease. Or why Italians – the word “malaria” comes from the Italian “mal’aria”, meaning “bad air” – are not swamped with the disease.

IT has been said the big pharmaceutical companies in the West are not ready to spend good money funding a cure for sickle cell disease because the sufferers are mostly blacks and too poor to afford the drugs. There may be some truth in this, as manufacturers of HIV drugs had to be shamed into allowing cheaper copies of their drugs to be made.

SO sickle cell patients continued to experience crises of pulverising pain and then the final crisis, which came as comfort.

UNTIL now. Now, there is real comfort. It is the comfort of life and not the relief of death, of freedom from infernal pain. A cure has been found for sickle cell disease and the breakthrough was made by Nigerians. The Minister of Science and Technology, Professor Turner Isoun, disclosed this at a news conference on Tuesday, July 4.

THIS significant news was not reported by many newspapers and those that did buried it in their inside pages. Were they erring on the side of caution? Did they smell another Abalaka vaccine controversy?

THE minister said serious research by scientists at the National Institute for Pharmaceutical Research led to the discovery. The drug, called Nicosan, was then manufactured by a pharmaceutical company in Nigeria, Xechem Pharmaceuticals Nigeria Ltd.

THE drug is said to be a potent cure for the disease. The World Health Organisation (WHO), according to the minister, had pronounced the drug the world’s most effective in the treatment of sickle cell disease. The drug has also been certified safe and succouring by the demanding Food and Drug Administration of the United States and regulatory agencies in Europe. A Congressman, Sharon Beasley-Teague, was present at the minister’s news conference and praised the Nigerian scientists who discovered the drug.

THE discovery of a cure for sickle cell disease by Nigerian scientists and the manufacture of the drug by a pharmaceutical company in Nigeria are, indeed, uncommon achievements. The discovery is as important as finding a cure for AIDS. Sickle cell disease brings misery to millions of people around the world. And like AIDS, it weakens immune system and death results.

NIGERIA, with the discovery and manufacture of the sickle cell disease drug, has taken a great step for humanity. Sickle cell patients can now expect to live a normal life. Most of them died before they were 50; some of them, with the blessing of their creator, may now live to a ripe old age.

FOUR million Nigerians are said to suffer from sickle cell disease. Though there is now a cure for the disease, everything should be done not to add to the number of sufferers. The disease is very easy to prevent. All it takes is to know one’s genotype. A person whose genotype is AS should not make babies with anybody with an identical genotype. If they do, their individual single gene AS will combine to form two sickle cell genes – sickle cell disease – in their baby.

THE problem in Nigeria is that many people do not have information on genotype screening. They live in ignorant bliss but anguish comes to stay when they have a child with sickle cell disease. There is a sickle cell support group in Nigeria but it appears it does not have much money to engage in a sustained awareness campaign. It is usually heard of during its annual meeting.

THE government and the private sector should be involved in providing information about the disease. In the United States, many newly born babies are automatically screened for the disease. The same thing should begin to happen in government hospitals in Nigeria. Children and adults should be given access to subsidised screening, if not totally free. The government can afford it. Reagents do not cost the earth.

THE discoverers of the sickle cell disease drug deserve national honour. And, who knows, a Nobel Prize may follow.