Diagnostics


Fighting


alaria is a disease that has plagued humanity as far back as ancient Egyptian times. And while, as of December 2024, Egypt has officially been granted malaria-free status, the mosquito-borne infection still claims more than half a million lives each year. Globally, we are still far from having a handle on it, particularly in low-resource areas where effective diagnostic and control measures are hardest to implement.


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malaria with AI


Malaria diagnostics is a multi-pronged field, with no one method providing a silver bullet, and researchers always trying to add more tools to their arsenal. Elly Earls sat down with Roxanne Rees-Channer, a malaria researcher at the Hospital for Tropical Diseases at UCLH, to find out how one of the newest prongs – AI – could act as a valuable support tool for overwhelmed remote clinics.


The first references to malaria date back to the fourth and fifth centuries, but our first real understanding of it came in the late 19th century, when the introduction of Romanowsky stains, such as Giemsa, enabled the microscopic identification of malaria parasites in blood smears, establishing a diagnostic standard that remains in use today. While this technique has become a cornerstone of malaria diagnosis, it faces significant challenges in


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