A Comprehensive Screening Program for Hemoglobinopathies

Abstract

A comprehensive screening program for hemoglobinopathies, established in April 1970, includes a ten-minute cellulose acetate electrophoresis procedure for primary screening, additional laboratory studies for specific diagnosis, and clinical follow-up by neighborhood health center physicians. The simple screening test costs approximately 5 cents per sample and uses hemolysates prepared from packed unwashed red blood cells collected in microcapillary tubes. The electrophoresis procedure was easily learned by inexperienced volunteer technologists. During the first eight months, 107 of 1,000 health center patients and 63 of 358 hospital patients had hemoglobinopathies diagnosed. The basic screening method can distinguish sickle cell trait, sickle cell disease, and sickle cell-hemoglobin C disease. The comprehensive nature of the screening program is further demonstrated by the detection of patients with thalassemia minor, hereditary persistence of hemoglobin F, and hemoglobin types AC, CC, and B 2 .