Thalassemia is the commonest single gene disorder in Sri Lanka. Government
sponsored palliative care accumulate caseload leading to escalation of the
health budget. Therefore prevention has become mandatory. Lack of facilities for
antenatal diagnosis and the legal sanctions of abortions kept the nation away from
adopting the policy of terminating the affected pregnancies which is the wellestablished
A mechanism for constant motivation and monitoring should
be put in place for thalassemia prevention as has been done
for other community based prevention programs. Educational
programs should be strengthened further targeting primary
health care workers, first contact doctors and all the staff
of outpatient departments. Enhancing the current teaching
about the scientific basis of thalassemia prevention in school
curriculum is underway. However compulsory screening and
counseling seems a reasonable policy considering the possible
risk of thalassemia carries living in society with high prevalence of
Thalassemia is an important public health problem in Sri Lanka
because of its chronic, incurable nature causing a heavy burden
of suffering on families and a large financial cost to health
services. Treatment is mostly symptomatic therefore cost
escalation is inevitable. Cost of care for managing thalassemia
patient is estimated to exceed 5% of the limited health budget
of the country [1]. However establishing a cure with stem cell
transplantation is unlikely to be affordable by the vast majority of
sufferers even when this service becomes available in Sri Lanka.