Sickling in the Western Sudan

Abstract

'Searches for sickling in the Sudan have, so far, been made in the Southern (Foy, Kondi, Timms, Brass and Bushra, 1954), Upper Nile (Roberts and Lehmann, 1955) and Bahr el Ghazal provinces (Yousif, 1962). In addition, a search for the abnormal haemoglobin variants has been made by the technique of filter paper electrophoresis in Khartoum (Vella, 1961 ; 1964). Because the patients suffering from sickle cell anaemia reported by Hassan (1960) came from families belonging to the Masalati tribe of Darfur province and because no other information on the frequency of sickling in this part of the Sudan was so far available, a survey was undertaken during the early part of November, 1963 in El Fasher, capital of this province. Sickling was found in 8.4 per cent of some 2.400 subjects tested. The results of this survey will be presented here.