November was affirming for Dr. Kenneth Ataga, physician-researcher at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center and director of its Center for Sickle Cell Disease. Ataga is from Nigeria, where an estimated 1 million people, including 250,000 newborns every year, have sickle cell. In the space of 10 days last month, the FDA approved two new treatments for the disease, one of the oldest molecular diseases. It had been more than two decades since the last breakthrough.