HemoTypeSCTM Point-of-care Testing as a Screening Tool for Sickle Cell Disease among Newborns in Ilesa, Nigeria

Background: The prohibitive costs and inefficient health systems are major factors that hinder the successful and sustainable implementation of newborn screening (NBS) for sickle cell disease in many countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Cheaper point-of-care testing from previous studies is effective for screening across age groups, including neonates. Objective: To determine the diagnostic accuracy of HemoTypeSCTM as a screening tool for sickle cell disease among the newborn population at Primary Health Care facilities in Ilesa, Osun State, southwest Nigeria. Methods: This was a community-based cross-sectional study. Blood samples of 304 newborn babies were collected for haemoglobin phenotype determination by both high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and HemoTypeSCTM testing. The performance of HemoTypeSCTM was compared with the gold standard (HPLC) to determine its diagnostic accuracy. Result: The overall diagnostic accuracies of the HemoTypeSCTM kit for Hb AA, Hb AS, Hb AC, Hb SC and Hb SS phenotypes were 98.0%, 99.0%, 100.0%, 100.0% and 99.3%, respectively. Conclusion: The HemoTypeSCTM kit can be used reliably as a rapid diagnostic tool for screening newborns for SCD due of its high overall diagnostic accuracy.