Brazil resumes health cooperation with Angola to address sickle cell anemia

The Brazilian government announced the resumption of health cooperation with Angola in blood and blood products to help the African country face the sickle-cell anemia crisis it is suffering, official sources informed.

This week, a delegation of doctors and specialists from the Angolan Ministry of Health is conducting visits and meetings in Brasilia, Belo Horizonte, and Salvador to reactivate bilateral health cooperation.

In 2020, there were 11,540 registered cases of the disease in Angola. The official estimate is that almost 2 percent of live births in Angola have this type of hemoglobinopathy.

The rate of people with the so-called sickle cell trait, a genetic mutation in which the disease does not manifest itself, but can be transmitted to offspring, is almost 20 percent in the country.

The delegation’s technical visit to Brazil includes a videoconference to present a distance course on the Guthrie test to detect sickle cell disease.

The action involves neonatal screening technicians from the Brazilian Ministry of Health and professors from the Federal University of Paraná (UFPR).

The proposal is to implement a national sickle cell anemia policy in Angola.

“We chose Brazil because it is a reference in Latin America and worldwide in the approach to people with sickle cell disease,” explained Francisco Domingos, director of the Institute of Hematology of Angola and head of the mission in Brazil.

“We have started, as a pilot project, to apply the Brazilian experience with the Guthrie test. We will not do like Brazil, with tests for several diseases. We will start only with sickle cell anemia.”

The cooperation, according to Domingos, also includes projects to qualify blood donation in Angola since contributions only occur between family members in the country.

Angola currently processes about 80 bags of blood daily, which means 150,000 a year, but only 20 percent comes from volunteers.

The idea is to use the Brazilian experience in recruiting volunteers to expand and qualify the process in Angola.