Sickle cell patients to have quicker and more accessible treatment in England

Sickle cell disease primarily affects people from an African-Caribbean background and in England about 17,000 people are living with the disease. Photograph: Syahrir Maulana/Alamy

People living with sickle cell disease in England are to benefit from quicker and more accessible treatment due to a £9m investment, the government has announced.

Apheresis services, which are a type of treatment that removes harmful components from a patient’s blood, are to improve across England through the funding of more specialist treatment centres. The funding will ensure the wider availability of machines that remove a patient’s sickled red blood cells and replace them with healthy donor cells.