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David Akande: Things I Wish People Knew About Sickle Cell

David Akande/LinkedIn

Sep 7, 2026, 18:25

David Akande: Things I Wish People Knew About Sickle Cell

David Akande, Executive Director of One Desire Foundation, Member of Youth Sounding Board at European Union in Ghana, shared a post on LinkedIn:

“Day 6/30 – Things I Wish People Knew About Sickle Cell

Six days into this series, let’s clear up a few things.

Sickle cell is not contagious. You cannot catch it from me. You are born with it because of the genes you inherit from your parents.
Having the sickle cell trait is not the same as having sickle cell disease. Someone with as carries the sickle haemoglobin gene but generally does not have sickle cell disease.
Sickle cell isn’t just about pain. Pain crises may be one of the most recognised parts of the condition, but sickle cell can affect different organs and parts of the body and cause serious complications.
Not everyone with sickle cell has the exact same experience. Two people can have the same genotype and still experience the condition very differently.
Looking healthy doesn’t mean sickle cell has disappeared. There are periods when I can go about life normally, and there are periods when everything changes.
And please… stop telling people with sickle cell that they will die young.

Yes, sickle cell is a serious lifelong condition.

But people living with sickle cell are studying, building careers, getting married, having families, running businesses, travelling, leading organisations and doing incredible things with their lives.

We need honest conversations about the realities of sickle cell without making someone’s diagnosis sound like a death sentence.

That’s actually one of the reasons I’m doing these 30 days.

There is a lot people have heard about sickle cell.

Some of it is true.

Some of it is half-true.

And some of it… I honestly don’t know where we got it from.

So, let me hear from you:

What’s something you’ve heard about sickle cell that you’ve always wondered whether it was actually true?

Drop it in the comments. No question is too basic.

I might just make it one of the next posts.”

David Akande