DI-DIDA

Description

Infectious diseases continue to be the major causes of mortality and morbidity in Africa. The impact of known existing, emerging and re-emerging diseases like malaria, tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS, cholera, meningitis, hepatitis, schistosomiasis, lymphatic filariasis, sleeping sickness, Ebola, SARS and others are causing suffering and mortality to a wide proportion of populations in Low-and-Middle-Income-Countries (LMICs) in general, and in Africa in particular, with over 227 million years of health life lost and produce an annual productivity loss of over $800 billion. Importantly, many infectious diseases are co-endemic and occur at high prevalence alongside other infectious diseases within populations. Often individuals will suffer worse outcomes as a consequence of co-infections with more than one infectious disease. Co-infection with two or more infectious diseases leads to co-morbidities that have serious consequences both for patient treatment and for care pathways. Further, co-infections between humans and their livestock, especially in rural communities has a significant impact, whilst the prevalence of such zoonotic infections, including febrile illnesses caused by brucellosis, leptospirosis, and Q-fever, not clearly understood (and often diagnosed incorrectly, symptomatically). The DI-DIDA project thus proposes to address the issues of diagnostic sensing and mobile-health (m-Health) in an integrated manner using the mobile phone to power the DNA-based isothermal diagnostic, to collect and communicate the result, providing decision support if required, to add contextual data around time and location and to interface with existing healthcare databases.