Sickle Cell and the Workplace

Sickle Cell and the Workplace

On March 25, 2025, a young man living with sickle cell disease who was in crisis had to wait 21 hours to get a bed in a UK hospital, as reported by the Mirror. This is because the nurses felt that he was exaggerating his pain. On July 31, 2025, it was reported by the Kenyan Vigilante (on X) that a Kenyan woman lost six jobs because she had sickle cell disease. This is the kind of cruelty a sickle cell warrior has to deal with. In fact, it is a double-edged cruelty: the cruelty of the pain of crisis that causes absences at work and then the cruelty of the indifference or the punitive response of the workplace.

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Sickle cell disease is a genetic blood disorder causing red blood cells to sickle, leading to painful crises, organ damage, and other complications. I wrote about sickle cell disease in June; you can read it here: @tayo6/on-world-sickle-cell-day-2025.
World Atlas reports that this condition is prevalent in Sub-Saharan Africa, accounting for about 80% of global cases of sickle cell disease. Within Sub-Saharan Africa, Nigeria has the largest population of people with sickle cell disease, with over 100,000 babies born with the condition every year.

Sickle cell disease causes painful crises because blood flow has been blocked by the sickling of the red blood cells (in simple terms). This means absences from work; several sick days in a year. This crisis could lead to fatigue, reduced productivity, and maybe mental health issues like anxiety, arising from the fear of judgment.

(My shot!) Take your flowers, warriors, there's no one stronger.

Countries like the United States of America have concrete laws to protect sickle cell carriers. The Nigerian 1999 constitution (as amended), on the other hand, only states that no one should be discriminated against based on the circumstances of one's birth. This has been interpreted by the courts to include sickle cell disease. However, the Nigerian Labour Act does not provide coverage for people living with sickle cell disease, meaning there are no laws that protect them, especially. This therefore means that a sickle cell warrior who takes an unexcused absence due to sickness may be fired and has no ground to appeal because the Labour Act does not expressly cover for unexcused absences that may arise as a result of the unpredictable nature of sickle cell disease.

There is a sickle cell bill that has passed Senate in 2021 but is yet to get full assent as of October 10, 2025. One of the issues this bill addresses is flexible work hours for sickle cell warriors. This provision recognizes the unpredictability of sickle cell crises and therefore seeks to allow warriors to balance work and health needs. Now, can you imagine that a warrior who had gone through a very painful episode of crisis, comes back to work, and is slapped with a "lazy" label because people, especially the capitalist employer, feel that the person is exaggerating the pain? There's still the worry of being hit with wage deductions as a no-show penalty because they missed work due to absences without permission. I don't even know which is worse, the judgment or the punitive deduction of one's wages for something that is beyond one's control.

And of course, this for my very special friend.

The way forward, as I see it, is for laws to be implemented, like that bill, which will audit policies about sickle cell. Stuff like tax breaks, incentives for accommodation, and health bills, or at the very least, insurance paid for by the employer, could go a long way into resolving these issues. It is hard enough for one to constantly live in pain; it is harder still for the employer to make life harder for the sickle cell warrior by being unnecessarily harsh because of absences from work.

PS: I've wanted to write this piece since September which is Sickle Cell Awareness month, but a bloodcurdling story shared about discrimination and blatant abuse of power by a doctor to an SCD patient made me weak every time I tried to write. Another time, we'll talk about this calibre of healthcare workers that are not fit to be called humans.