MILLENNIUM HEALTH UK Charity no. 1119453
Microscope Foundation www.millennium-microscope.org
THE TRUSTEES acknowledge with grateful thanks the support received from the Wellcome Trust, the Royal Microscopical Society and the East of England Development Agency which, together with gifts from others, has enabled the development of the new Millennium Health Microscope to reach completion. The first pre-production examples of this innovative microscope are now complete and one has been trialed with success in Uganda. Click for the latest information.
WHY MICROSCOPES ARE URGENTLY NEEDED IN THE DEVELOPING WORLD
This year millions will die in the developing world from preventable tropical diseases and an enormous number of these will be young children under the age of five who will die from malaria. Millions more will suffer the debilitating effects of the helminthic diseases resulting in entrenched poverty. While the greatest scourge is malaria which is present in 140 countries, placing some 3.2 billion people at risk, 650 million people will also be at risk of contracting schistosomiasis and the other helminths. Millions, too, are at risk from tuberculosis. Collectively these diseases wreak the greatest havoc in continental Africa yet these debilitating diseases are endemic throughout the tropical regions of the world.
The disease burden of infectious and parasitic diseases in the tropical regions is truly alarming and continues to exert a curse on socio economic development, condemning tens of millions of people to a life of grinding poverty because of prolonged and unnecessary illnesses. Nearly all of these tropical diseases are preventable and may be routinely diagnosed by simple microscopic examinations of either blood, stool or urine specimens and there remains a pressing need for microscopic diagnosis of these diseases. Nevertheless the continual attrition of facilities within rural health clinics renders the lack of microscopes a major logistical bottleneck because of high cost. This is especially true amongst field-based roving health teams or first-point-of-call health centres in remote areas. Furthermore an ‘on the ground’ health assessment is urgently needed to reveal the true extent of tropical diseases to better guide preventative drug delivery.
The WHO reaffirms microscopy as the 'gold standard' for the diagnosis of tropical diseases.
There is a compelling case for the availability of a low cost microscope and the Millennium Health Microscope (MHM) has been conceived to address this need. A simple and pragmatic alternative to expensive laboratory instruments, this low-cost, highly portable microscope could be made available and distributed widely to the developing world within as little as one year.
OUR MISSION
To empower the international fight against malaria, tuberculosis and the
helminthic diseases with the low-cost Millennium Health Microscope
To save the lives of the many in the rural tropics
with affordable diagnostic microscopy
Latest news - July 2009
Millennium Health Microscope
wins major Design Award
The microscope was announced the winner of 'Best Design Innovation' at the Creative East
Awards 2009 held recently at the Theatre Royal Norwich and hosted by Clive Anderson.
The Award presenter, Professor Aftab Gharda, said 'The Millennium Health Microscope is
an oustanding entry and the unanimous choice of the judges. The outright winner, it displays
superb design and innovation combined with the potential to do great good in the world.
Preliminary evaluation of the Millennium
Health Microscope completed in Uganda
One of the pre-production microscopes has been evaluated in Bugiogo, Western Uganda,
in an area endemic for intestinal schistosomiasis. Click to view the Abstract
AN APPLICATION FOR FUNDING is being submitted to finance production and to conduct
an extensive two year trial in a selected developing world country endemic for malaria and
the helminths, using up to 200 examples of the new microscope. Additional donations will
be hugely welcomed and if you can help us fulfil this worthwhile vision please
Malaria parasite: plasmodium falciparum
