The US3 study: a first step towards large scale epidemiology for sickle cell disease in Africa

It is currently estimated that 230,000 babies are born each year in sub-Saharan Africa with the sickle cell disease (SCD), compared to 10,000 in the USA and 3,000 in Europe. However, these estimations are based on very scarce and outdated data that even the most sophisticated geostatistical methods cannot make more accurate (1). Moreover, despite the obvious high frequency of the disease in sub-Saharan Africa, there is no comprehensive study on the natural history of SCD in this region. Previous surveys suffer from small sample size and many methodological biases (2).