Dr Kofi Anie is an Honorary Clinical Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Medicine, School of Public Health, Imperial College London. His clinical base is at the London North West Healthcare NHS Trust. In 2001 he was given the Outstanding Achievement Award by the Sickle Cell Society. He was Chair of the Research Governance Committee for the former North West London Hospitals NHS Trust. between 2000 and 2014; and in 2011/2 he was the named, co-opted Expert for the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) Guideline Development Group for ‘Sickle Cell Acute Painful Episode: management of an acute painful sickle cell episode in hospital’. He is currently a Scientific Advisor to the Sickle Cell Society.

Dr Samir Ballas received his medical degree with distinction from the American University of Beirut-Lebanon. He is currently Emeritus Professor of Medicine and Pediatrics at Thomas Jefferson University and Honorary Staff member of the Department of Medicine/Hematology at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital.  He is a former Director of the Adult Sickle Cell Program of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania for the Philadelphia Region and also a senior member of the Cardeza Foundation for Hematological Research, former Director of Jefferson’s Sickle Cell Center, and former Director of the Thomas Jefferson University Hospital Blood Bank.  He has been an elected member of the Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society since 1967 and is a member of the Editorial Board of the American Journal of Hematology, Hemoglobin, and Advances in Hematology. In 2011 he received the Life Time Achievement Award for Service, Research and Education for Sickle Cell Disease from Howard University. He has authored a book about Sickle Cell Pain, originally published by the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) in 1998 and the second edition of this book was published in 2015. Recipient of Distinguished Service Award from the Sickle Cell and Thalasemia Patients Network, Brooklyn, NY on March 31, 2012 and Recipient of the American Academy of Pain Medicine (AAPM) Patient Advocacy Award on March 21, 2015.

Professor Mariane de Montalembert has been a paediatrician at the Necker-Enfants Malades Hospital in Paris, France since1985. She has gained certificates in infectiology and transfusion. In 1994 she became a Doctor of Ethics. She has been responsible for the centre for haemoglobinopathies in Necker-Enfants Malades Hospital since 1994. She has developed several researches in clinical paediatrics about sickle cell disease and thalassaemia, and is responsible for the French register of sickle cell disease children treated with hydroxyurea.