Abstract

Reducing the Cost of Universal Neonatal Screening for Sickle Cell Anemia in Sub-Saharan Africa with Paper-based Diagnostics

Sergey Shevkoplyas, Associate Professor, University Of Houston

Sickle cell anemia (SCA) is a major contributor to under-5 mortality in sub-Saharan Africa.  The high cost of neonatal screening remains the primary barrier to identifying and treating affected infants.  Even in regions with the highest incidence of the disease, >95% of the limited funds available to SCA screening programs is currently spent on testing healthy children.  A potentially much less expensive alternative to testing all newborns, is to first identify mothers with the beta-sickle (ßS) allele (and therefore at risk of having an infant with SCA) using a low-cost screening test, and then only test their infants using the conventional laboratory methods to render the diagnosis.  The simple, rapid, inexpensive, equipment- and electricity-free paper-based test recently developed in our laboratory could significantly reduce the cost of universal neonatal screening for SCA by enabling this two-stage screening strategy.