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DR JULIE MAKANI: Feeling the pain of sickle cell anaemia

Saturday March 31 2012

There is a personal reason why Dr Julie Makani wanted to study sickle cell disorder.

“I had three cousins, all brothers, with sickle cell anaemia. One of them had a painful crisis while at our home. It was heart-wrenching to watch. He had what was considered a ‘mild form’ of the disease. He studied medicine in Russia but sickle cell anaemia killed him in his prime, just as he had started working,” Dr Makani said.

The 41-year-old Dr Makani completed her medical degree at Muhimbili University in 1994.

In 1997, she got a Commonwealth scholarship for a post-graduate diploma in internal medicine at the the University of London in the UK.

While there, Dr Makani wrote a proposal to study cerebral malaria back at Muhimbili with the support of Oxford University.

Through her work on malaria, she collaborated with the KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Kilifi in Kenya and in 2003, she was awarded a PhD training fellowship to study sickle cell anaemia in Tanzania.

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Dr Makani co-founded the Sickle Cell Foundation of Tanzania and is with the Ministry of Health to develop a national programme for management of the disease in the country.

Dr Makani was last year’s winner of the Royal Society Pfizer award for her efforts in sickle cell anaemia research.

As well as lecturing at Tanzania’s Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences University, Dr Makani is also consultant physician of haematology and blood transfusion at Muhimbili National Hospital.

She is a visiting clinical research fellow, Nuffield Department of Clinical Medicine, University of Oxford as well as principal investigator, sickle cell disease study, Muhimbili Wellcome Programme.

Her PhD thesis described the causes of illness and death in individuals with sickle cell in Tanzania.

She is now working towards intervention studies.

The Wellcome Trust has funded a 5-year project for Dr Makani to study the role of hydroxyurea in the treatment of sickle cell disease.

Hydroxyurea is the only drug licensed for treatment of complications of sickle cell.

In studies conducted in the developed world, use of hydroxyurea reduces the likelihood of painful crisis, blood transfusion, hospitalisation and death.

However, studies have not been done in local settings within Africa to determine the best way to use this drug.

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