On the razor's edge: sickle cell anemia, race and the implications in health care

Abstract

The political propositions in health for the black population have a recent history in the Brazilian political setting, with a special highlight to the National Program on Sickle Cell Anemia. This program is an output of political actions launched by the black movement on behalf of the recognition of sickle cell anemia as prevalent disease among Brazilian black population. Discourses on the sickle cell anemia have been built in the core of that political action, stressing, based in biological and epidemiological assumptions, the racial character of this disease. The objective of this article is to criticize those assumptions, emphasizing the ethical implications of disease racialization.

sickle cell anemia; racialization; ethics; health care