Dr Amel El Beshlawy, founder of Egyptian Thalassemia Association (ETA) and Professor of Pediatric Hematology at the Pediatric Hospital of Cairo University, is considered the Middle East’s leading authority on Thalassemia, having made an enduring contribution not only to improving the survival rate of thalassemia patients in her clinical practice, but also to the awareness of a disorder that effects one thousand of every 1.5 million new-borns in Egypt. She speaks about the government-backed program to counter the country’s high prevalence of thalassemia and how the success of other recent screening and treatment initiatives have had a positive impact on advancing this objective.
There is a great deal of governmental support for this initiative [to decrease the number of patients born every year with thalassemia] both in verbal and financial terms, also the European Union will be granting some funding to build up the program and other related initiatives.
