Mamadou Tahirou is 18 but he looks more like a 12-year-old, his frame frail from the ravages of sickle cell disease.
Symptoms including bone pain, severe anaemia, extreme fatigue, and intense headaches frequently land him in the hospital, putting immense pressure on both him and his family.
“It hurts a lot, and you suffer so much. And when you don’t have enough resources to protect yourself from the illness, you suffer even more. My parents are exhausted, I know that,” he said.
Fits of pain sometimes flare up while he is in class, disrupting his education and forcing him to miss school regularly.
Speaking with tears in her eyes, his mother, Rabiatou Diallo, said her son is very tired and is often in hospital.
“He has pain in his feet, and at the moment he cannot walk. It is very difficult. The medication and hospital costs are very expensive,” she said.
Africa accounts for nearly 80 per cent of cases of the inherited red blood cell disorder but relies on expensive imported medication from Europe and the Americas.
This includes hydroxyurea, the treatment recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO) which it says helps reduce painful crises, hospitalisations, the need for blood transfusions, and premature death.
Now, a Senegalese pharmaceutical company has produced the first Africa-made treatment, raising hope for the millions of sufferers.
Teranga Pharma CEO, Mouhamadou Sow, said his company is producing a generic version of hydroxyurea, the gold standard in sickle cell treatment.
“Africans do not have access to the active ingredient. So the first key point is that Teranga Pharma has enabled Senegalese and Africans to gain access to this molecule,” he said.
Before the company developed Drepaf – the generic hydroxyurea drug – if a person was unable to obtain or afford imported medicine, no local solution was available.
“Doctors often had to treat the consequences of the disease rather than addressing its root cause, the red blood cells,” he said.
It was launched in November 2025, and is available in 500mg doses for adults and 100mg doses for children, with the goal of “reducing the crisis threefold”.
The generic drug offers hope for addressing the shortage of treatments and reducing reliance on more costly imported medication.
Sow says Teranga Pharm has set itself the mission of “taking charge of, and shaping, the pharmaceutical future” of countries in sub-Saharan African countries.
“Our approach is based not only on financial considerations but also on public health. Because if Africa is to develop, if Africa is to enjoy good health, the medicines that Africans take must be produced in Africa,” he says.
And it is already garnering interest from several countries across the continent.
The initiative is backed by $7.1 million in funding and comes at a time when access to imported treatments has become difficult.
Teranga Pharma is working with an Indian technical partner to ramp up production and supply other African nations.
The laboratory says it is already working with Burkina Faso, Guinea and Ivory Coast, and that it has received requests from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Gabon, and Cameroon.
The company aims to meet demand from the entire sub-Saharan continent by 2030, as part of a strategy to strengthen Africa’s pharmaceutical sovereignty.
