Prevention of the hemoglobinopathies

Abstract

The inherited hemoglobin disorders not only cause suffering and unhappiness to the patients but they also absorb a large part of resources and human effort in several countries which harbor the deleterious genes. Numbers are frightening! Africa, with several millions patients with sickle cell anemia; India with millions of patients with sickle cell disease and thalassemia, South East Asia with more millions of patients with hemoglobin E and a- or b-thalassemia. The offered treatment is suboptimal or nil and, and, in several places, patients are dying at infancy not only because of their hemoglobinopathy but mainly because of infections and malaria; in this way, nature took care of her own faults and eliminated them before they enter productive life...