THE Sickle Cell Trust has submitted a proposal to the Ministry of Health for a five-year pilot project, which it hopes will help reduce the number of Jamaicans born with the disease. The project is estimated to cost $4 million.

“It will be a pilot study done in Manchester and we will screen the fifth form students of 12 secondary schools in Manchester and we will pick up every case that is carrying the abnormal gene, said Professor Graham Serjeant, chairman of the Sickle Cell Trust. “We would have focused on the aggressive counselling of those people,” he added.

Professor Serjeant, who was speaking at last week’s launch of the Friends of the Sickle Cell Trust at the British High Commission in Kingston, said the Mandeville Regional Hospital would be establishing a new born screening programme to identify children born with the disease.

Professor Serjeant told the launch that the success of the project would be evident in the decline in the number of babies born with sickle cell in that parish at the end of five years.

Sickle cell is an inherited blood condition that is common in people of African origin. It affects the red blood cells, which contain a special protein called haemoglobin (Hb).

At present 15 per cent or 375,000 persons in the Jamaican population has the sickle cell trait and at risk of having a child with sickle cell disease. If both parents have the genetic trait, there is a 25 per cent chance of their offspring being born with the disease.

Professor Serjeant said the medical cost for lifetime management of sickle cell was more than $1 million, therefore the project would practically alleviate some of that cost.

“For every child that we prevent being born with this condition, you save a million dollars,” he said. “The programme is going to cost $4 million a year. We would have to prevent four out of the projected 30 births a year in Mandeville and the programme is already paying for itself.”

According to Professor Serjeant, sickle cell disease can be avoided by simple blood test that will determine whether or not a person carries the sickle cell gene, which allows them to determine whether or not the want to procreate.

“We want to educate the population and say look, the decision is yours, you can either have a child by somebody who carries the gene and take the risk of having an affected child or if you wish you can actually make sure that your partner does not have the abnormal gene,” he said. “You have the choice of having health child or running the risk of having a child with sickle cell disease,” he said.

The Sickle Cell Trust, which was formed 20 years ago, is a registered charity that focuses on public education about the disease as well as try to improve and develop services for persons living with the disease.

Its first project was the building of the sickle cell clinic at the University of the West Indies, followed by the Cable and Wireless Education Centre located on the roof of the clinic.

Additionally, since 1999, Karlene Mason, the trust’s sole employee has been travelling to the more than 150 high schools in Jamaica giving lectures to the fifth formers about sickle cell disease.

Professor Serjeant, in the meantime, has made an impassioned plea for financial support to operate the trust.

“The trust needs friends because our budget is only $3.5 million a year,” he said. “We only have one paid staff member. But we do generate a lot of educational material that has to be printed and distributed.”