In his native Ghana, Dr. Ohene-Frempong established a pilot program to provide screening for sickle cell disease in newborns in the southern city of Kumasi. It was the first such program in sub-Saharan Africa. In addition to identifying children with the disease, the program referred them to specialized clinics that provide treatments such as antibiotics to prevent infections, routine immunizations, and a drug, hydroxyurea, which can reduce the risk of complications from sickle cell disease.†
Kwaku Ohene-Fremong was born on March 13, 1946 in Kukurantumi, eastern Ghana, to Kwasi Adde Ohene and Adwoa Idi Boafu. His father was a cocoa farmer and a prominent member of a royal family.
Kwaku attended boarding school, Prempeh College, and then Yale University, where he studied biology and captained the track and field team, setting indoor and outdoor records in the high hurdles. As a student, he met Janet Williams, who attended Cornell University. They were married on June 6, 1970, a week after they both graduated.
dr. Ohene-Frempong said in a 2019 interview that he first learned about sickle cell disease when he and some friends attended a lecture on the disease at Yale. As he sat listening, he said, he suddenly recognized the disease: It ran in his family but had not been diagnosed. One of his cousins had the symptoms and died at age 14.
“He was in pain,” he said of his cousin. “His eyes were very yellow and he was very thin.”
dr. Ohene-Frempong continued his medical education at Yale and then went to Weill-Cornell Medical Center at New York Hospital in Manhattan for his residency. He studied pediatric hematology at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia before moving to Tulane University School of Medicine, where he was an associate professor of pediatrics.
In his six years at Tulane, he founded the Tulane Sickle Cell Center of South Louisiana, a medical care facility, and helped the state health department develop a newborn screening program for the disease.
In 1986, Dr. Ohene-Frempong returned to the children’s hospital and remained there for 30 years before going full-time in Ghana, at the Kumasi Center for Sickle Cell Disease, a research and treatment center. He was still based there when he returned to Philadelphia for cancer treatment.
