Malaria kills 429,000 people every year in Africa. Nine out of ten of these cases are in sub-Saharan Africa, and the majority affected are children aged under five. Between 2000 and 2015, measures such as bed nets and indoor spraying prevented more than 660 million cases across Africa. But more needs to be done. Scientists and technologists around the world have put the issue of malaria under their microscope, developing innovative solutions to improve diagnosis and tackle the source of the disease.
Malaria kills 429,000 people every year in Africa. Nine out of ten of these cases are in sub-Saharan Africa, according to the World Health Organisation, and the majority affected are children aged under five. It also costs Africa up to $12 billion a year in lost GDP, according to Unicef. Between 2000 and 2015, measures such as bed nets and indoor spraying prevented more than 660 million cases across Africa. However, this doesn’t go far enough and more needs to be done to stop the spread of the disease.
Malaria derives from the Italian words mala aria or ‘bad air’, and is a pathogen transmitted by mosquitoes. There are many variants of mosquitoes and it is believed that solutions need to be custom-made to tackle each local mosquito population, in their natural habitat, in order to truly eradicate malaria. New technologies can play a fundamental role in eliminating this life-threatening disease. A Ugandan engineer, Brian Gitta, won the 2018 Africa Prize for Engineering Innovation award for his bloodless malaria testing device called Matibabu. Once clipped onto a person’s finger, the device scans it for changes in colour, shape and the concentration of red blood cells. The result is produced within a minute and sent to a mobile phone linked to the device. Matibabu has been praised for being low cost, reusable and non-invasive, and importantly it doesn’t need specialist training to be used.
The Urine Malaria Test (UMT) by Fyodor, a manufacturer of diagnostic and biopharmaceutical products, is the first and only non-blood test to identify malaria. UMT can be taken at home in a similar way to a pregnancy test, and is alleviating the pressure on health facilities for diagnostic tests. This technology won the inaugural Health Innovation Challenge Award in Lagos in 2015.
Taking a more holistic approach, an organic cosmetic range in Burundi, Africa, has been created with a view to tackling malaria. Ginette Karirekinyana created plant-based hand lotions and soaps using ‘catnip’ grown in the area and turned into an essential oil. Research published in 2017 discovered that 55 people out of 60 weren’t bitten when using lotion containing catnip oil and plant-based mosquito repellents are considered to be as effective as synthetic repellents.
Scientists and technologists around the world have also put the issue of malaria under their microscope. A Dutch team has created a smartphone app which can detect malaria, when combined with a microscope. The MOMALA app uses an algorithm that can detect the presence of Malaria parasites on a regular blood smeared slide. It enables high quality diagnosis in low resource environments and provides results within minutes. It’s also cheaper to use than a Rapid Diagnostic Test (RDT), meaning high-quality care can become affordable for everyone.
Scientists are also working hard to eliminate malaria at source. Laboratory tests are taking place inside an ‘insectary’ at Imperial College London to genetically manipulate mosquitoes that carry the disease. The technology, called Gene-drive, has been used in a trial to create mosquitoes carrying a faulty gene, which affects the female’s ability to produce eggs, resulting in the species being eradicated. The technology has been described by Martin Edlund of the pressure group ‘Malaria No More’ as potentially being, “one of those transformative tools that makes the end of malaria possible”. The technology will continue to undergo rigorous testing in larger controlled environments, before being rolled out in a small African town called Bana in Burkina Faso in 2024. However, environmentalists warn that eradicating a species could disrupt whole ecosystems in unforeseeable ways – affecting crops, people’s livelihoods and even ultimately their health. Technology and science can potentially eradicate the issue of malaria, but with the capabilities of the 4IR, could there be an alternative that isn’t as destructive to the natural ecosystem?
In addition, human testing is being progressed as a means of tackling the disease. The UK is regarded as a world leader in the study of infectious diseases, and trials are now being conducted on humans. These are mainly healthy students, paid for their participation, who are given a trial vaccine followed by a mild dose of a disease to see how they react. Both Oxford University and Imperial College London are trialling with healthy recipients in the hope of finding a solution. Direct trials are considered to be a viable means of progressing the development of new vaccines at a fraction of the cost of field studies.
The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals aim to eradicate malaria by 2030. With leaders in science, business, technology, and home-grown innovations all working to provide solutions, there is hope that this target can be achieved.
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