Abstract:

Background: Sickle cell disease (SCD) is a neglected burden of growing importance. In Africa, more than 200,000 infants are born yearly with SCD. In Tanzania, it is estimated that there are between 8000 and 11,000 children born with SCD annually, making this one of the countries with the highest SCD annual births worldwide. Pain is the most common cause of acute morbidity in sickle cell disease. The pain episodes may bring also negative consequences to the normal development of a child at stages of emotional, socio-behavioral, cognitive, and academic progress. There are studies that have been at BMC on complications found in children with sickle cell disease, but there is no study that has studied factors that could be associated with painful crisis among children with sickle cell disease.

Methods: The questionnaires were sequentially provided to care of children with SCD admitted in the paediatric ward at BMC who gave consent to participate in the study. Data was analysed using SPSS software.

Results: The study included a total of 118 participants. Participants aged 0-24 month were 36(30.5%), those aged 25-59 month were 20(16%) and those aged ≥ 60 month were 62(52.5%). The mean age was 60 months the most predominant sex was female who were 61(51.6%), male were 57(48.3%). The prevalence of painful crisis for the past twelve months among the study participants was 73.7%, whereby of the children had been admitted for painful crisis those who cold weather was reported cold to be the commonest trigger were 63(72.4%), followed by exercise 49(29.8%) then the least prevalent was swimming 21(24.1%).

Conclusion: There is high prevalence of painful among children with sickle cell disease admitted in the pediatric ward at Bugando Medical Centre. The prevalence of painful crisis was 73.7% in the past 12 month with bone pain being more prevalent. Majority of these symptoms were due to extreme weather conditions including cold that was the most prevalent trigger.