Health Diagnostics

Pradeep Das of Rajendra Memorial Research Institute of Medical Sciences in India will determine how to ensure that people with Visceral Leishmaniasis, a neglected infectious disease of poverty in Bihar, India, receive the necessary point-of-care diagnosis needed to receive treatment and save lives. Many people die from this disease because they do not receive the available diagnosis and treatment.

This project will develop a low-cost nucleic acid detection test that will enable rapid detection of pathogens that cause sleeping sickness in Africa and Chagas’ disease in South America, both in vectors and human. This will strengthen surveillance activities and enhance monitoring of therapeutic outcome in resource-poor endemic areas.

The project seeks to develop a simple, fast, and accurate test to improve the number of sleeping sickness patients that are detected and thus increase the case management rate. When successful, tests will be conducted in the less equipped rural laboratories where needed. Sleeping sickness is a neglected disease that burdens rural populations in the tsetse fly belt.

Project aims to develop a low-cost hand-held device for field diagnostic of dengue. This device should allow real-time detection of the disease. Follow Alexandre Brolo on Twitter @agbrolo"

Early detection of dengue fever is needed to determined which patient must acquire intensive monitoring. Lidya Chaidir from Universitas Padjadjaran, Bandung, Indonesia will develop a rapid molecular assay for early detection of dengue fever in primary care. This tool would empower any field clinics to diagnose dengue promptly.

The project, “Development of a point of care test for the diagnosis of Buruli ulcer disease” at the Noguchi Institute aims at providing endemic communities with a simple, rapid, accurate and cost effective test for the detection of Buruli ulcer cases for early treatment initiation and prevention of disabling complications. Click HERE to Download the photos below. Follow Anthony Ablordey on Twitter @AAblordey  [caption id=""attachment_7964"align=""aligncenter"width=""492""] Star in Global Health Dr.

ctrl.para.site is a teleparasitology system linking peripheral labs to experts via a microscope-online-mobile phone interface, with an expected multiplier effect of improving access to diagnosis and treatment, capacity building, and new information.

Diseases affecting rural communities in the tropics co-exist and often share symptoms. Clinical diagnosis is the foundation for treatment. Consequently, deaths due to misdiagnosis and drug wastage occur. I intend to use silkworm to generate diagnostic proteins for multiple pathogens with overlapping symptoms and develop a multi-disease diagnostic kit.

Current malaria surveillance relies on identifying the malaria parasite by microscopy and detecting soluble parasite antigens using Rapid Diagnostic Tests. Both techniques do not detect low-level, non-evident malaria infections, and are inherently hazardous and invasive. This innovative idea aims to develop a non-invasive, thermo-stable, saliva-based and field adaptable molecular method for nation-wide surveillance of malaria in Cameroon and Senegal. The technique will stabilize Malaria parasite DNA in saliva at ambient temperatures for up to one year, saving the cost of cold storage.

We propose a simple, affordable and practical approach to differentiate between malaria and bacterial diseases and guide treatment through the use of a combined rapid test based on two validated markers of bacterial and malaria infection.