In 2011, the then WHO Director-General, Dr Margaret Chan, proclaimed, “The usefulness of our most potent weapon in treating malaria is now under threat.” Chan called out to researchers, funders, and policy leaders to recognize the urgency of artemisinin-resistant Plasmodium falciparum parasites, a formidable threat that jeopardizes the goal of malaria eradication. Flash forward to […]
Lancet pricks the finger and blood streams out. A tiny glass pipette sucks a drop – 5 microliters to be exact. Blood is dropped in the sample well and two drops of solution in the buffer well. Now begins the twenty minute wait. This is the Malaria Rapid Diagnostic Test (mRDT). The lab technicians at […]
It is estimated that almost 438,000 people died from Malaria in 2015. Most of this total is in Sub-Saharan Africa. There have been many approaches to solving this problem, but John Lewandowski, a PhD student in mechanical engineering at MIT believes quick diagnosis is critical. That is why he created the device called RAM (Rapid […]
In the last century, we have come a long way in our ability to treat infectious diseases. The twentieth century saw the development of penicillin and other antibiotics, the invention of the polio vaccine, and the development of medications to manage HIV. In the early 2000s, many scientists turned toward seeking cures for non-communicable diseases […]
With new mosquito-borne diseases such as Zika and Mayaro grabbing headlines, malaria gets little attention in 2016. In the last 15 years new cases have dropped 37% globally and global deaths have dropped by 60%1. Sri Lanka made the news in September as the most recent country to successfully eliminate malaria. But what perhaps is […]