Mission Statement

The sickle cell unit is a research instituition which seeks to improve the lives of individuals with haemoglobinopathies through rigourous biomedical research, Education, and Clinical Care.

Background

The sickle-cell unit in Kingston has operated Jamaica’s only comprehensive sickle-cell centre since 1973, and initiated the Jamaican cohort Study of Sickle-Cell Disease (JSSCD) in the same year. JSSCD participants (552 haemoglobinopathies and 246 AA genotype controls) were initially identified from neonatal screening of 100,000 consecutive hospital deliveries. In the 27 years to December 1999, JSSCD members had been followed for between 18 and 26 years, and 6,464 non-cohort patients had also presented to the clinic (and formed the clinic study). We have used longitudinal information from these study groups to examine three challenges facing sickle-cell disease (SCD) epidemiology: important gaps in our knowledge of the natural history of the disease, how to recruit study participants and define haematology and clinical endpoints in ways that minimise study bias, and how to define and predict SCD health-status.