With advances in the science of medicine rising by leaps and bounds, we are truly at a unique point in human history. Diseases and other medical issues that have run rampant now wait in line to be dealt the deathblow they rightly deserve. This is thanks to breathtaking breakthroughs in scientific research, carried on by a few dedicated people thinking outside geographical bounds, in the true tradition of the scientist and fellow intellectual entrepreneurs who have, over time, changed the course of our world, mostly for good.
As Science takes on the menace of malaria with a resolve that promises to yield a final solution, there is a take we must note on the state of research infrastructure and scientific undertakings on our shores. It is significant that the twin breakthroughs about to be celebrated by the world at large also serve to underscore the glaring entrenched dearth of research and scientific enterprise here.
This state of affairs, in the final analysis, simply means that our education, especially at the critical university level, has ceased to be universal and functional; the system is no longer amenable to problem-solving. Instead, it has become stuck in a rut of rote learning, one from which students (as much clueless as their handlers) simply strive to scamper off ‘certificated’, not necessarily the same state of affairs as ‘educated’.
Thankfully, there is now in place an initiative for bringing about a culture of relevant scientific inquiry into all things boggling in the land. It’s the Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas NLNG-endowed Nigeria Prize for Science (there’s a second award for Literature). Regretfully, even this glimmer of hope for catalysing a badly needed revolution has had cause to blink in perturbation as the Prize has not been awarded half of the time since its inception. Undaunted, the organisers went on to put the unclaimed cumulative prize money - $20, 000 the first time; $ 30, 000 the second – into a fund for upgrading laboratory facilities in select institutions across the country.
Mercifully, the North (better known as the West) is still up and about on tackling this downside of the South. Whether for gain or fame, there is no gainsaying the fact that once again, well before we can hope to catch up on the act, the Northern hemisphere, with its well established culture of scientific research that exists largely for its own sake, is reaching down to our half of the world with sorely needed help: a line of attack to eradicate – completely – the scourge of malaria. Most common in tropical and subtropical regions, malaria is a universal curse that leaves in the trail of its strike 350 to 500 million (reported) new cases annually. According to UNICEF, an African child is lost to it every 30 seconds.
While preventative measures such as sleeping under a mosquito net, flitting sleeping quarters or the use of preventive medication, have proven to reduce the risk of coming down with malaria, it has however been difficult to discover a truly long-lasting solution to the spread of the disease.
Though not a new idea gene modification is what scientists believe will be the hero to millions of individuals who remain at risk of the debilitating disease. The science has been in use in plants to eliminate certain characteristics from strains of some species in order to help farmers end up with better crops. Now, the focus of the technology has shifted to one of Man’s giants that would not be so easily slain: the mosquito.
The idea is to create a genetically altered mosquito with a resistant gene that kills the parasite causing malaria (plasmodium, extant as many strains) without harming the mosquito. This bug would then be introduced into the population of mosquitoes carrying the malaria parasite. When the mosquito produces offspring, the resistant gene would be passed on to the new generation of mosquitoes, which would then pass it on to the next generation, and so on. Eventually, the parasites causing the disease would be weeded out of their vector organism – the mosquito – completely. The theory is robust.
Scientists at the Johns Hopkins Malaria Research Institute in Baltimore, Maryland in the United States are toying with the idea of creating such a mosquito. It’s looking more and more a possibility. It remains one of the more promising ideas out there for bidding very good riddance to a really bad nonsense.
Meanwhile, while we keep our fingers crossed, waiting for this final solution, from farther up in the Northern hemisphere is an optical laser technique that will soon eliminate the need for slides, staining and microscopes, the standard laboratory set-up in testing people for the disease.
A research team led by Dr. Paul Wiseman of the Departments of Physics and Chemistry at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, has developed a radically new technique that uses lasers and non-linear optical effects to detect malaria infection in human blood. The researchers say the new technique holds the promise of simpler, faster and far less labour-intensive detection of the malaria parasite in blood samples. This rapid malaria detection breakthrough is set to glide out from the Northern Hemisphere, to take on the world of Plasmodium in the South, where the parasite holds patent sway. The resources and trained personnel required to accurately diagnose the disease are spread the thinnest in sub-Saharan Africa, where most of the fatalities remain concentrated.
Current detection techniques require trained technicians to stain slides, look for the parasite’s DNA signature under the microscope, and then manually count all the visible infected cells, a laborious process dependent on the skill and availability of trained analysts. In contrast, the proposed new technique relies on a known optical effect called third harmonic generation (THG), which causes hemozoin – a crystalline substance secreted by the parasite – to glow blue when irradiated by an infrared laser.
“People who are familiar with music know about acoustic harmonics,” explains Dr. Wiseman. “Everybody has a fundamental sound frequency and then multiples of that frequency. Non-linear optical effects are similar: if you shine an intense laser beam of a specific frequency on certain types of materials, you generate multiples of [their] frequency. Hemozoin has a huge, non-linear optical response for the third harmonic, which causes the blue glow.”
According to Mark Shainblum of the Media Relations Office at McGill, Dr. Wiseman and his colleagues hope to co-opt existing well-established technologies like fibre-optic communications lasers and fluorescent cell sorters into their groundbreaking technique to quickly move it out of the laboratory and into the field. “We’re imagining a self-contained unit that could be used in clinics in endemic countries,” says Dr. Wiseman. “The operator could inject the cell sample directly into the device, and then it would come up with a count of the total number of existing infected cells without manual intervention.”
Hopefully, relevant authorities in Africa and the other regions of the world where the disease is endemic will rise to lend moral support toward accelerating dividends from these researches to get home to the grassroots, thereby achieving the shortest possible lab-to-town transit. Malaria has maligned efforts at development in these places so much and for far too long; it shall not be spared any moment longer.
Plasmodium-free female mosquitoes can, like their male counterparts have done all along, simply make their music – in full acoustic harmonics – and whine themselves hoarse and out; that would be peace and no gripe for the human species. Shall we move on to clear the next stench on the block, please?
Did You Know?
‘Malaria’ is a Latin word. It was coined to describe the condition based on the thinking, then prevalent, that the disease was caused by inhaling or being exposed to bad (‘mal’) air (‘aria’).
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