What is Sickle Cell anaemia? (brief overview)

Sickle Cell anaemia falls under a group of disorders referred to as Sickle Cell Disease. It is a hereditary disease that affects the red blood cells in your body. This causes the body to have an insufficient amount of red blood cells to oxygenate the body.

People of African descent are more susceptible to sickle cell disease, and the rates of infection are very high in Africa in comparison to other continents. Although less common, the disease can also occur in people of different descents as well. Approximately 1 in 12 black people carry the sickle cell trait, and roughly 1 in 400 have sickle cell anaemia. Inheriting the sickle cell gene from both parents will result in you developing the disorder, and inheriting just 1 will mean you carry on the trait. If both parents have the trait, there is a 25% chance (1 in 4) that the child will have sickle cell anaemia. 

According to a study done by CDC, 25 665 black people died as a result of an SCD (sickle cell disease) related death from 1979 to 2017. With this data, we can assume that an average of 676 (675.395) black people died annually from 1979-to 2017 because of SCD.