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

Government announces 9m funding to make specialist blood machines more widely available across NHS

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.