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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, in pregnant women, concentration of parasites is too low to
detect with traditional diagnostic tools, ultimately resulting in many deaths every year.
Problem: inadequate Malaria diagnostics
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 [http://www.who.int/features/factfiles/malaria/en/index.html 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)
