In his native Ghana, Dr. Ohene-Frempong established a pilot program to supply screening for sickle cell illness amongst newborns within the southern metropolis of Kumasi. It was the primary such program in sub-Saharan Africa. Along with figuring out kids with the sickness, this system referred them to specialised clinics that offered therapies like antibiotics to stop infections, routine immunizations and a drug, hydroxyurea, that may cut back the chance of problems from sickle cell.
Kwaku Ohene-Fremong was born on March 13, 1946, in Kukurantumi, in jap Ghana, to Kwasi Adde Ohene and Adwoa Idi Boafu. His father was a cocoa farmer and a outstanding member of a royal household.
Kwaku attended a boarding college, Prempeh Faculty, then went to Yale College, the place he majored in biology and was captain of the monitor and area group, setting indoor and out of doors information within the excessive hurdles. Whereas a pupil, he met Janet Williams, who was attending Cornell College. They married on June 6, 1970, one week after that they had each graduated.
Dr. Ohene-Frempong stated in an interview in 2019 that he first discovered about sickle cell when he and a few buddies attended a lecture in regards to the illness at Yale. As he sat listening, he stated, he instantly acknowledged the illness: It was in his household however had gone undiagnosed. One among his cousins had the signs and died at 14.
“He was in ache,” he stated of his cousin. “His eyes had been very yellow, and he was very skinny.”
Dr. Ohene-Frempong continued on to medical college at Yale, then went to New York Hospital Weill-Cornell Medical Heart in Manhattan for his residency. He studied pediatric hematology on the Youngsters’s Hospital of Philadelphia earlier than shifting to the Tulane College College of Drugs, the place he was affiliate professor of pediatrics.
In his six years at Tulane, he established the Tulane Sickle Cell Heart of Southern Louisiana, a medical care facility, and helped the state well being division develop a newborn-screening program for the illness.
In 1986, Dr. Ohene-Frempong returned to Youngsters’s Hospital and remained there for 30 years earlier than leaving to work full time in Ghana, on the Kumasi Heart for Sickle Cell Illness, a analysis and remedy heart. He was nonetheless based mostly there when he returned to Philadelphia for most cancers remedy.