Profession: Scientist

Inspired by: I have been interested in improving the medical diagnosis of malaria since i worked for a few years in a medical laboratory in a developing country. I was surprised to read one day that parasitized red cells were magnetic. One person had proposed a way to measure the parasitemia by making measurements of opacity of a suspension of blood in saline before and then after a magnetic field was applied to a cuvette. But in most cases the parasitemia is too low to detect in this way. So after thinking about this new concept that red cells become magnetic when parasitized with malaria plasmodia i decided to use a magnetic field to concentrate the parasitized red cells into one spot for observation (microscopy). This would be most valuable. Sometimes finding one parasitized red cell is like finding a needle in a hay stack - but using a strong magnet might not be so bad. After several experimental apparatus i finally made an inexpensive, reusable, and easy to use device.