Firm drives innovation for treatment of hemophilia patients

Hemophilia is a rare genetic disorder that causes the blood to take a long time to clot because of a deficiency in one of several blood clotting factors.

The Medical Director, Sub-Saharan Africa, Pfizer, Kodjo Soroh, said that the firm’s efforts at advancing treatment for hemophilia and bridging gaps in access to care resonate with this year’s theme, ‘Access For All: Prevention of Bleeds’.

Soroh said that the firm’s commitment to equity and continued investment in hemophilia is evident in its more than 30 years experience in developing therapies for hematological disorders, as it has a deep understanding of the significant challenges that people living with hemophilia continually face.

“We will continue to amplify and celebrate the work of the global hemophilia community, as we create awareness on the need for innovation to access hemophilia treatments,” Soroh said.

The Professor of Hematology and Blood Transfusion of the University of Lagos (UNILAG), Akanmu Sulaimon, explained that hemophilia is almost exclusively found in males.

According to him, people with hemophilia are at risk of excessive and recurrent bleeding from modest injuries, which have the potential to be life threatening.

People with severe hemophilia often bleed spontaneously into their muscles or joints, or rarely into other critical closed spaces, such as the intracranial space, where bleeding can be fatal, he noted.

World Federation of Hemophilia said that more than 38,000 people worldwide were living with hemophilia B in 2021. A senior lecturer at the Department of Child Health, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Kumasi, Ghana, Dr. Vivian Painstil, said that people living with hemophilia B face significant burden.

The Managing Director, Penn Comprehensive and Hemophilia Thrombosis Programme, Adam Cuker, said that the BENEGENE-2 data demonstrated the promise of the gene therapy candidate as a potential one-time option for people living with hemophilia B. For him, this is a means of reducing the clinical and treatment burden over the long term.