Prevention and control of thalassemia in Asia.

Thalassemia and abnormal hemoglobin are the most common inherited diseases. The only treatment readily available in most countries is regular blood transfusion and iron chelation that is recommended in severely anemic patients with iron overload. In the last 20 years there has been much progress in terms of diagnosing, preventing and managing thalassemia. This has lead to the success of prevention and control of thalassemia in many Mediterranean countries such as Cyprus, Italy and Greece. Objective: To introduce approaches that may be applied for the control of thalassemia in developing countries including Asia where thalassemias are very prevalent.