See This Device That Can Detect Malaria in 5 Sec - Coming to Nigeria

I don’t need to tell you that malaria is one of the most deadliest disease in the world, despite the fact that it is curable and preventable, World Health Organization (WHO) in 2015 estimated that 438,000 people died from malaria mainly in sub-Saharan Africa.

But John Lewandowski, a 26-year-old PhD student in mechanical engineering at MIT made a mechanical device called RAM (Rapid Assessment of Malaria) that can diagnose malaria from a drop of blood in five seconds.

With a single drop of blood, Lewandowski’s RAM device can accurately detect the presence of malaria using Magneto-Optical Detection as early as a week before symptoms even present themselves. Like a pregnancy test, the RAM analyzes the sample and returns either a positive or negative response.

Beyond the outer box and LCD display, the RAM consists mainly of a circuit board, a laser, some magnets and an SD card reader.

A recent filed test in India yielded results that were accurate 93% to 97% of the time, and the company will launch a new field trial this summer in Nigeria that hopes will test as many as 5,000 patients.

This is a good development, coming to Nigeria.