Asiata Onikoyi-Laguda, is 91-year-old sickler who has 5 children and has gone to Mecca 13 times...
Onikoyi was born in November 1925, at a time when the average life
expectancy of people living with sickle cell disorder was just five
years.
Onikoyi, who was born in the same year as Margaret
Thatcher, first female British prime minister; Malcolm X, civil rights
activist, and Idi Amin Dada, Ugandan dictator, older than ‘all’ known
(documented) sickle cell patients in the world.
As recently as
1973, the average lifespan for people with sickle cell disease was only
14 years. Currently, life expectancy for these patients can reach 50
years and over, New York Times reports.
In 2013 alone, 176,000 people lost their lives to sickle cell disease, most of them aged 21 years old and under.
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