New Delhi: As part of the National Sickle Cell Elimination Mission under the National Health Mission (NHM), the government aims to screen 7 crore people under the age of 40 for sickle cell disease by 2025-26 across 17 states, with a primary focus on tribal populations.<\/p>\n
The list of these states includes Maharashtra, Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Gujarat, Rajasthan, etc.<\/p>\n
Speaking to ANI about the National Sickle Cell Elimination Mission 2047 programme, Dr Manisha Madkaikar, Director of ICMR-CRHCM, Nagpur, said, \u201cThe National Sickle Cell Elimination Mission has given the guidelines. The first is universal screening \u2014 in areas with a very high prevalence of sickle cell disease, the entire population under the age of 40 is screened. Currently, the plan is to screen nearly seven crore individuals for sickle cell disease.\u201d<\/p>\n
She also highlighted the importance of newborn screening. \u201cWe can test for sickle cell disease as soon as a newborn is born. Newborn screening is important because if you diagnose newborns early, you can give them effective treatment,\u201d she explained.<\/p>\n
Regarding antenatal screening, she said, \u201cIn antenatal screening, the first visit is an ideal time to screen a pregnant woman. If she is found to be a carrier or affected, we can test her partner. If both are carriers for sickle cell disease, we can counsel them about testing the fetus before 20 weeks\u2019 gestational age. If the fetus is affected, the couple can consider options regarding sickle cell disease and the decision about pregnancy termination is left solely to the patients and their family.\u201d<\/p>\n
Commenting on the advancements in testing kits for sickle cell disease, she said there is a growing need for large-scale, reliable tools.
\n\u201cIndia has seen a lot of advancement in the development of diagnostic kits. We have developed indigenously made point-of-care tests in the past two to three years. ICMR-NIH and CRHCM have tested around 35 such kits, identifying those suitable for use in screening. These include point-of-care tests, simple molecular diagnostic tools, and solubility tests, all of which are now validated and made available under the programme,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
New Delhi: As part of the National Sickle Cell Elimination Mission under the National Health Mission (NHM), the government aims to screen 7 crore people under the age of 40 for sickle cell disease by 2025-26 across 17 states, with a primary focus on tribal populations. The list of these states includes Maharashtra, Odisha, Chhattisgarh, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13098,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-13097","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-national"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13097","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13097"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13097\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13099,"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13097\/revisions\/13099"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13098"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}