Team:Amplino/Problem

From 2012e.igem.org

Challenge

Every year 300 million people get infected with malaria, and 1 million die because of it. One of the challenges in dealing with malaria lies in diagnostics. Malaria is prevalent in developing countries in which there are not nearly enough tests, WHO states there is a need for 1.6 billion tests annually to deal with the disease, but only 16 million are delivered. On top of that the available tests don’t work in a number of cases. For instance, when the concentration of parasites is too low to detect with traditional diagnostic tools, ultimately resulting in many deaths every year.

Problem Summary: current Malaria diagnostics are inadequate

Additional information

Shetty et al – The numbers of the game, Nature 484, S14–S15 (26 April 2012)

Due to the lack of diagnostics statistics on Malaria are inevetably blurry. According to the WHO best estimates, up to 1 million people die each year because of Malaria. 90% of those, occur in sub Saharan Africa.

Feachem, R. G. A. et al. Lancet 6736 (10), 61270–61276 (2010)/Roll Back Malaria Progress & Impact Series: Report 8 (WHO, 2011)

Each year about $ 2 billion is spend on Malaria control, including prevention, diagnostics, treatment and monitoring.

Roll Back Malaria Progress & Impact Series: Report 8 (WHO, 2011)