Africa: Canadian Scientist Wants to Catch Malaria Before It Catches Others

10 February 2009

Paul Wiseman is one popular professor in Canada. An Associate Professor simultaneously at the Departments of Physics and Chemistry of McGill University, he obtained his PhD in Chemistry from the University of Western Ontario in 1995 before joining McGill in 2001 after post-doctoral fellowships in Japan and the US.Wiseman has a new cutting-edge optical laser technique that promises to eliminate the need for slides, staining and microscopes. As leader, his research team developed a radically new technique that uses lasers and non-linear optical effects to detect malaria infection in human blood. The new technique promises simpler, faster and far less labour-intensive detection of the malaria parasite in blood samples.

Malaria is a vector-borne infectious disease spread by parasites of the genus Plasmodium. Most common in tropical and subtropical regions, it is a global scourge with 350 to 500 million new cases - including one to three million fatalities - reported annually. Most of the fatalities are in sub-Saharan Africa, where the resources and trained personnel currently required to accurately diagnose the disease are most unavailable.

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