By Brenda Zulu

Malaria Research Institute at Macha Mission Hospital has been able to facilitate access to the world’s medical knowledge and locally-relevant content resources for strengthening public health research through the use of e-health with the help of the internet and has also been able to develop safer methods for large scale malaria screening by detecting malaria parasite in urine or saliva than blood.

In an interview, Dr Philip Thuma Executive Director at Macha Mission Hospital said that the research was done because the institute embraced the use of the internet so that they could see what other research institutions had done and also enabled them to partner with researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s.

He explained that although not a diagnostic test for determining treatment, the method could potentially reduce the need for blood sampling in epidemiological studies where large-scale malaria screening was required. He said the large scale sampling using saliva was an important alternative for rural based communities in that when medical personal extract blood samples some communities in Zambia would think that the blood was being used for Satanism.

On the other hand Dr Thuma explained that drawing blood increases the risk of spreading HIV/AIDS and other diseases, particularly in those developing countries where both HIV/AIDS and malaria are prevalent. He added that the other problem with blood drawing for malaria test should be performed by trained personnel, whereas urine and salvia sampling does not.

“Using saliva to test malaria could be an easier and safer way to collect the information needed for studying malaria in communities. Urine on the other hand was not easy to get especially from babies,” said Dr Thuma.

He said the test uses polymerase chain reaction (PCR), a technique for duplicating and then examining unique bits of DNA from a sample, thereby allowing DNA to be multiplied in the laboratory. The same PCR technique is used for examining malaria in blood, but has never been applied to urine and saliva samples.

The study was conducted in collaboration with colleagues at the Malaria Research Institute’s research hospital in Macha, Zambia. Urine and salvia samples were obtained from 47 volunteers with malaria and 4 without, and were then examined with the PCR method. DNA from the Plasmodium falciparum, the parasite that causes malaria, was replicated at higher levels from the saliva compared to the urine samples. However, neither method was as sensitive as that using blood samples.

“Programs for monitoring anti-malarial drug and vaccine efficacy could therefore adopt such a bloodless method, while maintaining high sensitivity for clinically significant infections,” said Sungano Mharakurwa, PhD, lead author of the study and a researcher with the Malaria Research Institute in Macha.