‘Put God first, and doctor next,’ Liberian child with Sickle Cell disease tells audience
When 14-year-old Franklin Zeon stood before his audience Saturday, September 27, 2025, to share his own testimony regarding his own battle with sickle cell disease, he had only one piece of advice for Liberian parents with kids affected by sickle cell disease: “Put God first, and the doctor next.”
That statement by little Franklin Zeon, before a record crowd of local campaigners, parents, and their kids, fighting against Sickle Cell Disease (SCD), triggered a thunderous applause, knowing how this debilitating disease negatively affects children in all forms, including their speech, mental health and even movements.
“Sickle Cell is bad. It can cause stroke, it can affect the bone. Sometimes it come to the back, from the back, to the hand, and the foot,” young Franklin said, as he described the sickness. He was drawing from his own fight with SCD over the years, although he didn’t give details.
He continuously praised the LORD, God, and then their pediatricians and doctors at the John F. Kennedy Hospital in Monrovia who are working so hard to save their lives and to live comfortably like other kids.
He urged parents to rush their kids to hospital for a checkup and not take them to local herbalists which is what most parents present at this event confessed they did first before turning to modern medicines.
Dr. Patience Dono Franklin, Consultant Pediatrician and National Coordinator for Newborn Screening for Sickle Cell Disease, at the John F. Kennedy Hospital, informed Global Ekklesia there are 200 children so far affected by the disease In Liberia.
She said “ignorance” and “the lack of knowledge” so far on the sickness are causing a real problem for Liberia, saying, they (doctors) are now extending SCD “testing” to other remote parts of Liberia including Harper and Lofa, to help people living in those regions.
Unlike other developed and developing-nations, Liberia isn’t known to have a single children’s hospital as of the year 2025. As a result, children (including those with sickle cell diseases), and adults have been forced to share the same ward.
The event was organized by the MTS Sickle Cell Foundation-Liberia, headed by its Program Director Karen Kamara Schaack. Karen herself together with two other siblings suffered from the debilitating disease at an early age, prompting her later to wage a national campaign to put it under control.