Pharmacist aids Nigeria in sickle cell disease battle

Return trip planned later in year to launch Niprosan

Nigeria is quite a ways away from Moses Lake.

Which means Lateef Olaniyan is quite a ways away from his home land.

But earlier this year Olaniyan, pharmacy manager at the Food Pavilion in Moses Lake, returned from a trip to Nigeria, lasting from April 28 until May 9, in which he went home to help in the fight against sickle cell disease.

A New Jersey-based company, Xechem International, is working on a sickle cell disease drug, named Niprosan, in Nigeria, Olaniyan explained.

"They're trying to make sure the government in Nigeria gives them the go-ahead, or support them, to make sure they produce the drug for the people in Nigeria, because approximately 4 million people in Nigeria are affected with this disease," he said. "But people are not as educated as people in the U.S., so they have to raise the awareness so that they know that the disease can be treated, make sure that the drug is produced and make sure that the people would be able to afford it. That's the main thing."

In the United States, 75,000 people have sickle cell disease, Olaniyan said. He said it mostly affects black people.

"The disease is not only limited to people in Nigeria," he said. "People in Asia and Mediterranean, they have it. South America, Cuba … Even here when I work at the hospital, I see a few patients. And I have a personal friend whose daughter has it. The pain we're talking about is a really severe pain, really excruciating pain. And this pain can come once a year, once every two years, once a month — there's no frequency to it."

Red blood cells carry oxygen through the body, Olaniyan explained, adding that every cell in the body requires oxygen. When a person has sickle cell disease, the hemoglobin - the main part of the red blood cell — is deformed, so it won't be able to carry oxygen, and tissues are deprived of oxygen because of the shape of the red blood cell, which is sickle-shaped.

Sickle cell anemia is inherited from both parents who may be carriers with sickle cell trait or parents with sickle cell disease.

"This is a … disease that doesn't affect millions of people, and because of that it doesn't get awareness or exposure," he said. "It's not like diabetes or cancer, so the people that are suffering, their families or the people that know people that suffer are the only people that really know what is going on with this disease. The general population doesn't know. As a pharmacist or as a concerned person, I think it's important to find a solution to the disease or to be able to help people that have the disease."

Olaniyan said he came to the United States to go attend school in 1981 at a California community college. After getting his associate degree, he attended Idaho State University and then got a job as a pharmacist in Walla Walla.

After two years, he decided he wanted to work in a hospital, and came to Moses Lake in 1990 to work at Samaritan Healthcare, where he still works part-time, and said he started to work in the pharmacy at Food Pavilion, which he said used to be Market Place, in 1996.

When Olaniyan was in pharmacy school, he made friends with a professor, Dr. Adesoji Adelaja, who also hails from Nigeria and sits on the Xechem board.

"He called me up one day after becoming a member of Xechem … to let me know that he'd become a board member," Olaniyan said. "It just happened that I knew about a drug company facility in Nigeria that is no longer used … I mentioned to him that this might be a good place to be producing this drug."

Olaniyan and Adelaja kept in touch, and eventually Adelaja and Dr. Ramesh Pandey, Xechem CEO, invited him to go along to Nigeria. Olaniyan paid for the trip himself.

"I went because I'm from the country, but mainly because I knew the board members," he said. "Plus I prepared some information to be presented, slides and Power Points, but I didn't get to present that because most of the meetings we had were more business meetings."

Nor did Olaniyan get a chance to visit with family, he said, for the same reasons.

Olaniyan said that a colleague on the Nigeria trip took his camcorder and interviewed patients with sickle cell disease.

"Every single one of them was very happy with the outcome with the Niprosan," he said. "Right now it hasn't been officially approved; it's going through testing. The people that are using it in Nigeria; they are very happy."

Four hospitals in the United States are testing the drug, Olaniyan said.

"Lateef has been a valuable team member at our Moses Lake store and is also a valuable contributor and friend to many in the community," said Sue Cole, public affairs director for Brown and Cole Stores, which owns Food Pavilion. "It's not surprising at all that Lateef would dedicate some time to helping people in this manner. We're pleased that he is helping to make a difference in people's lives."

Olaniyan said a return trip to launch Niprosan is planned at the end of the year.

More information on sickle cell disease can be obtained at the Sickle Cell Disease Association of America Web site, http://www.sicklecelldisease.org/.