M.M. Murthy, senior heath official with the Directorate of Health Services, told IANS.

Murthy, who is also the state nodal officer of the government's Sickle Cell Disorder Control Programme since it was launched in late 2004, said: 'Thousands of people in the state are succumbing to sickle cell anaemia annually because most of the patients who live in illiteracy-hit pockets are not turning up at health centres for blood tests and thus end up transmitting the disease to their children.'

A sickle cell patient, Pawan Kumar Sahu, 43, who works as office-secretary, Raipur Press Club, narrates, 'I feel extreme stress in veins, mainly in both legs, and it looks that someone has been inserting a needle hard in my veins, it really creates unbearable pain'.

'Neither of my parents had sickle cell disease nor do my two daughters have it. As far as family history of the disease is concerned, only one cousin suffered from it. I have to regularly get admitted to the hospital when the pain becomes intolerable.

'Last week I was discharged from a hospital, but the pain I felt during the period still haunts me'.

The sickle cell disorder is an inherited genetic lifelong blood disorder characterised by red blood cells assuming an abnormal, rigid, sickle shape. Sickling decreases the cell's flexibility and results in a risk of serious complications.

The sickling occurs because of a mutation in the haemoglobin gene. Life expectancy is substantially shortened among patients.

When sickle-shaped cells block small blood vessels, less blood can reach that part of the body. A tissue that does not receive normal blood flow eventually becomes damaged; this is what causes the complications of the sickle cell disease.

(Sujeet Kumar can be contacted at sujeet.k@ians.in)