Opinion: Specialized centers can help realign the U.S.’s moral compass for sickle cell disease
Even as the United States has made commitments to health as a human right and reversing health disparities and has invested significantly in orphan diseases, it continues to overlook sickle cell disease (SCD), the most common inherited blood disorder worldwide, which affects more than 100,000 Americans, most of whom are Black or Hispanic American.
As hematologists who take care of people with sickle cell disease, it’s disheartening to see this condition receive only a fraction of the attention and resources that other inherited disorders receive. Cystic fibrosis, for example, which affects approximately 30,000 Americans, receives 10 times the federal funding.
