Hyderabad: In a bid to raise awareness about certain genetic disorders on the occasion of 'Rare Disease Day', Telangana doctors suggested that pre-counselling and right diagnosis are a must to prevent its prevalence in our future generation.
One such genetic disorder (or blood disorder) is Thalassemia, an incurable disease, which results in large numbers of red blood cells being destroyed.
Speaking on the same, Dr Gayatri, a Thalassemia specialist said: "Thalassemia and sickle cell diseases can be prevented by detecting the carriers by a blood test. If two carriers of this disease get married then there are 25 per cent chances of their children getting affected by the disease."
"Carrier detection must be our goal. This can be done during pregnancy or before marriage. If there is a couple whose child is affected with Thalassemia then the family members and blood relatives need to be screened," she said.
Dr Krishna Rao, member of Indian Organization for Rare Diseases asserted that there is a need to "spread awareness on Rare Diseases Day, celebrated annually on the last day of February as 20 lakh people are suffering from genetic disorders in Telangana itself."
"There are about 7,000 rare diseases. As per statistics, 85 percent of them are genetic," he said.
Stressing on the fact that there must be awareness in the society about the genetic diseases, Mohammed Imran, who himself is suffering from muscular disorder said, "Some of my muscles do not function properly due to the disorder. I cannot sit, stand or move on my own. After my graduation, I started working in a software company but now I am unemployed. There must be awareness regarding these genetic diseases so that the future generations can be prevented from getting such diseases through basic precautionary measures and proper diagnosis."
(With inputs from ANI)
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