Africa’s new sickle cell crisis plan to boost care

Africa carries the world’s sickle cell burden — and largely suffers it in silence. Eight in 10 people living with the disease are on this continent, with 400,000 children born into that reality every year. Yet for all its scale, sickle cell remains one of Africa’s most neglected health crises.

More than half of those born with it will not live to see their fifth birthday — most from infections that basic care could have prevented. In several African countries, it kills more children than malaria.