Simple Engineering applied to save lives for only 68 cents - Diagnosing Malaria
Two amazing inventions were developed at Stanford University, in Manu's Prakash laboratory, the Foldscope and the Paperfuge!!
Combined these two costs only 68 cents and can be used to diagnose Malaria!!
How so?
Well, the Foldscope costs $0,50 and the Paperfuge $0,18!!
Seeing this video reminded me how brilliant minds can work to make a positive dent in the world!!
What is a foldscope?
It was co-invented by Manu Prakash and Jim Cybulski while Jim was a PhD student in Mechanical Engineering in Manu's laboratory, with support from a Gates Foundation Exploration Grant [1].
Is a foldable microscope made mostly of paper that can be used for education purposes all over the world, but not only...
50.000 foldscopes were distributed over 135 countries and they have found an astonishing diversity of applications:
- To identify the microscopic eggs of agricultural pests in India;
- To catalog the biodiversity of soil arthropods in the Amazon;
- To detect fake currency and medicine;
- To follow toxic blooms;
- To detect bacteria in water samples;
- To map pollen diversity in a city landscape;
- (...) [1].
@pipokinha also shared this video about foldscope: A Paper Microscope that Costs $1 !!! ( VIDEO)
What is a paperfuge?
In the beginning of 2016, Saad Bhamla (a postdoc in Prakash’s lab) decided to analyze the spin of a toy from his childhood in India, called a whirligig. The paperfuge was designed on the basis of a theoretical model inspired by the fundamental mechanics of this historic whirligig (or buzzer toy) [2].
It's a hand-powered centrifuge made of paper, string, and plastic that can whip biological samples in circles at up to 125,000 rpm.
This is enough to separate pure plasma from a blood sample in less than 1.5 min and isolate malaria parasites in 15 min [3].
Sources
- [1] - www.foldscope.com
- [2] - The Paperfuge: A 20-Cent Device That Could Transform Health Care
- [3] - Bhamla MS, Benson B, Chai C, Katsikis G, Johri A, Prakash M (2017) Hand-powered ultralow-cost paper centrifuge Nature Biomedical Engineering 1:1-7 doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/072207
BADGES Courtesy of @elyaque
This is such a great invention. Thank you very for much for sharing it with us! Resteemed it.
Yes it is, it also impressed me!! Hope this can reach as many as possible!! :)
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Thanks a lot for introducing this marvellous invention. That is very useful and let's hope this will contribute to improve human being's life in the future.
As a bonus, and in addition to resteeming for exposure, we are awarding you a small 10 Steem Power deposit as a thank you for creating quality STEM related postings on Steemit. We hope you will continue to educate us all!
Thanks for the reward. I found these discoveries very interesting. I can imagine how useful this could be in countries like Angola.
cool stuff!