Professor John Robertson OBA

In the Guardian today, the above and:

People living with sickle cell disease in England are to benefit from quicker and more accessible treatment due to a £9m investment, the government has announced. Apheresis services, which are a type of treatment that removes harmful components from a patient’s blood, are to improve across England through the funding of more specialist treatment centres. The funding will ensure the wider availability of machines that remove a patient’s sickled red blood cells and replace them with healthy donor cells. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/jun/13/sickle-cell-patients-quicker-more-accessible-treatment-england

Typically there’s no mention of Scotland in the above nor is there any sign of media in Scotland on this story, despite this from NHS Scotland in 2024:

The Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service (SNBTS) is pleased to announce its collaboration with NHS Blood and Transplant (NHSBT) and NHS England (NHSE) to offer patients with rare inherited red cell disorders in Scotland access to state of the art blood group testing, as part of the Blood Group genotyping programme. This is the first step towards providing better matched blood transfusions for those who need it most. This programme will be open to patients in Scotland from 10 December 2024 to 30 September 2025. Information about the blood genotyping programme in Scotland.

https://www.nn.nhs.scot/spah/

Apheris services, in particular, for red cell exchange (inc sickle cell) have been in place since July 2024:

https://www.nss.nhs.scot/blood-tissues-and-cells/clinical-apheresis/therapeutic-apheresis/#:~:text=Contact%20your%20local%20apheresis%20unit%20to%20arrange%20a,your%20nearest%20Scottish%20National%20Blood%20Transfusion%20Service%20laboratory.