An Ophthalmologist, Dr. Louis Oteng Gyimah has appealed to parents to test and know the health status of their children for effective management of any form of chronic disease from infancy for their healthy living.

Dr. Gyimah, a practitioner at Sunyani Seventh Day Adventist (SDA) Hospital and a member of the SDA Sickle Cell Disease (SCD) Association made the appeal when he spoke at the Bono Regional celebration of this year's World Sickle Cell Day in Sunyani.

The programme, under the theme “Sickle Cell is real, know your status now to prevent SCD tomorrow" was organised by the SDA SCD Association and aimed at creating awareness about the reality of the disease and to sensitize parents of SCD children on what is required to take proper care of such children.

He observed SCD had been one of the diseases that retarded the growth of children and caused the death of others during infancy.

According to Dr. Gyimah, globally 400,000 children are born with the disease each year, saying 84 per cent of such cases were from the Sub-Sahara Africa and 19 out of every 1000 children got the SCD at birth.

He said people with such disease could live longer to fulfil their God-given dreams if they eat well-balanced diets and strictly follow health experts’ advice in managing the disease.

Dr., Gyimah advised SCD patients to always sleep under insecticide-treated mosquito nets to prevent mosquito bites which could cause a lot of complications in their bodies, and added that, they needed also to drink a lot of water and cover themselves very well, particularly during rainy seasons.