Angella D. Ferguson

Angella Dorothea Ferguson (February 15, 1925 – January 6, 2026) was an American pediatrician known for her groundbreaking research on sickle cell disease. While studying the normal developement of African American children at Howard University, Ferguson noted the high prevalence of sickle cell disease among her patients. A poorly understood disease at the time, sickle cell disease became the subject of Ferguson's studies. Through her subsequent research, she was able to create guidelines on how to diagnose and treat the disease as well as a blood test to detect the disease at birth. Though her father was a high school teacher, had his own architectural firm, and was a U.S. Army reservist, the family struggled financially, especially during the Great Depression.

She went on to earn a BS in chemistry from Howard University in 1945, and an MD from Howard University College of Medicine in 1949. a position she held until 1959, when she became assistant professor of pediatrics at Freedman's Hospital.

Research Her early research required her to understand normal development in African American children, but to her surprise no such baseline data existed. In setting out to rectify this gap in knowledge, she made the startling discovery that African American infants learned to sit and stand earlier than infants of European descent. She attributed this trend to the fact that the parents of African American infants often did not have playpens or high chairs for them; hence they learned to sit and stand earlier than their white counterparts. Through experimentation, she determined that if infants drank a glass of water once a day before age five, the increased blood volume reduced their chances of having a sickle-cell crisis, a condition in which the flow of damaged red blood cells is impeded, causing painful clogging of blood vessels.

In 1970 she returned to Howard University as head of the University Office of Health Affairs.

Memberships and recognition Ferguson was a member of the National Medical Association, the Society for Pediatric Research, the Society of Nuclear Medicine, and the New York Academy of Sciences.