A lower-cost protocol for sickle cell disease neonatal screening in Tunisia.

Background And Objectives: Sickle cell disease (SCD) is a group of hereditary chronic anemias that manifest essentially as painful crisis and susceptibility to infection. Neonatal screening is a preventive action that reduces the rates of mortality due to complications arising from infections by encouraging early prophylactic penicillin use and pneumococcal vaccination. The purpose of this pilot study was to set up a neonatal screening protocol at a lower cost than one that uses commercially available screening kits.