Nairobi, June 18 -- Africa carries the world's sickle cell burden - and largely suffers it in silence. Eight in 10 people living with the disease are on this continent, with 400,000 children born into that reality every year. Yet for all its scale, sickle cell remains one of Africa's most neglected health crises.

More than half of those born with it will not live to see their fifth birthday - most from infections that basic care could have prevented. In several African countries, it kills more children than malaria.

Yet for years, it wasn't even recorded as a distinct cause of death in national or World Health Organisation (WHO) data. A disease that goes uncounted goes unfunded - and sickle cell has paid that price for far too long.

Th...