SicklED has expanded from being a capstone research project (2018) to becoming a nationally-recognized, student-led venture. We have come this far with support from our partners both in the United States and in Sierra Leone.
Partners in the United States
Rockland Immunochemicals and Orasure Technologies have been crucial partners in the development of our project. We have been using Rockland for our antibodies since the start of our project. OraSure has graciously offered us support as well. The support from these organizations has been crucial to our project.
Partners in Sierra Leone
The organizations listed above have been critical to the work we have done on the ground. They have provided support to our project in various ways and we are extremely thankful for these partnerships. It is due to their support that we are able to continue to make an impact in Sierra Leone.
The two programs the team partners with in Sierra Leone include Sickle Cell Society and SCCAN, both of which are local programs that provide free or extremely subsidized testing for suspected sickle cell individuals, as well as free treatment for sickle cell individuals in there capture areas. The Sickle Cell Society utilizes the gold standard to diagnosis individuals while SCCAN uses a lateral flow device similar to ours as well as DBS to diagnose patients. While these programs are able to help a small group of people, they are unable to expand due to the high cost of providing the sickle cell diagnostic tests services. SicklED hopes to partner with these ventures to allow for mutual expansion as well as gain more access to patients in the Sierra Leone community.