Tiny blood card offers easy tests

A cheap and portable blood test could provide a breakthrough for diagnosing infections in remote areas, a study in the journal Nature Medicine says. Read the story on the BBC website here. The U.S developed device will cost about 60p and has shown almost 100% accuracy in tests for HIV and Syphilis in Rwanda.

The researchers hope the device will boost testing of pregnant women, especially in Africa.

Barely a quarter of pregnant women in low and middle income countries are tested for HIV, a figure which provides scant hoping of reaching the United Nations goal of eliminating mother-to-child transmission by 2015, according to the 2010 UNAids Report on the Global Aids Epidemic.

In Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo, for example, only nine and six percent, respectively, of pregnant women currently receive HIV testing, according to the report.