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Thalassemia is one of the significant public health concerns as the carrier rate and disease numbers are increasing worldwide. The increase in number is because of consanguineous marriage which has a deep-rooted norm among many people globally. Besides various clinical and psychological problems associated with thalassemia, a lifelong treatment aspect makes it much more difficult for a person or family to sustain with thalassemia or thalassemia-affected children. Though the government has come up with a screening programme for thalassemia, given the fact that it is optional, people tend to ignore it. Examples from Pakistan and Iran remind us to have a mandatory prenatal screening programme which is very much cost-effective. With a highly recommended notion, we suggest that it should be universal to have an antenatal screening programme to avert thalassemia-related deaths.
Bhattacharya et al. (2019) studied this question.