Sickle cell and thalassaemia: global public health issues come of age.

Sickle cell and thalassaemia are among the world’s leading genetic conditions with over five per cent of the world’s population carrying clinically significant haemoglobin gene variants (Modell and Darlison, 2008). In the UK, from where we write, services have been slow to recognize that sickle cell is now its most common genetic condition. Indeed in multi-ethnic countries of the North provision of health and social services for people living with sickle cell or thalassaemia have been marginalized (Anionwu and Atkin, 2001). In the US, authors such as Tapper (1999) and Wailoo (2001) have shown that the processes by which sickle cell has acquired its connotation as a “Black” disorder are above all social processes. Meanwhile up to 400,000 babies are born worldwide each year with sickle cell/thalassaemia and many die before their fifth birthday; just one of several indicators that mark sickle cell and thalassaemia out as a global public health issues (Weatherall and Clegg, 2001).