Health authorities are urging couples planning a family to take a simple blood test that can detect thalassaemia and other inherited blood disorders before they are passed on to a child.
Haematology Specialist Dr. Chathurma Piyarathna said conditions such as thalassaemia, as well as marriages between close relatives, can sharply increase the risk of children being born with serious genetic blood disorders. Where both parents are carriers, she said, there is a 25% chance of a child being born with major thalassaemia and a 50% chance of the child becoming a carrier themselves.
Dr. Piyarathna estimated that around 3% of Sri Lanka’s population are thalassaemia carriers — a baseline that translates to several hundred thousand people who could unknowingly pass the gene to their children. A pre-pregnancy blood test is enough to identify carriers and allow families to plan accordingly, she said.
Major thalassaemia requires lifelong treatment, typically including regular blood transfusions and iron-chelation therapy, placing a significant burden on both families and the public health system. Earlier this month, Anti-Filariasis Campaign Director Dr. Prasanna Serasinghe flagged a separate uptick in another preventable disease — confirming three new cases of the rarer Brugia malayi filarial worm and warning that surveillance must extend beyond the Bancrofti strain.
The blood test for thalassaemia carriers is available through government hospitals at no cost and is the cornerstone of Sri Lanka’s national prevention programme, which has run since the 1990s.
