KIU Medical Student constructs Corona Virus Diagnostic Kit.
Derick B. Wesonga, a medical student at Kampala International University is marching to a breakthrough on a project that intends to demystify the COVID-19 pandemic.
“This is a tool that will disrupt the status quo present in the diagnosis of the virus”.
With the use of antigen specificity, he and his team hope to incorporate Immunosorbent laboratory methods, skills popularly used for a number of microbial investigation, to use on the identification of the CORONA virus.
“Quick, affordable, accessible, reusable!: these are the tenets we are harnessing in the development of this product”. With this kit, Wesonga believes diagnosis in the developing world that has been run a top-down approach, with governments at the epi-center of the process can be made an individual ability.
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A plastic ‘breathalyzer ‘ with tubes that lead exhaled air to a test chamber containing an indicator and the other, leading to a chamber that provides control is the basic description of the tool. “You breathe out onto the device mouth, this exhaled air flows into an inlet that shuttles your air into a reagent-containing chamber.
The presence of the virus will automatically cause a color change to the indicating chemical. “
We hope to get to test the tool on an active sufferer of the disease, so, we can come on a hundred percent full acknowledgment of the kit. This is our short-coming given the known patients are in isolation.
The Chemistry of the tool, he says is a work similar in approach to ELISA, with a blend of the Rapid Diagnostic Test kits currently in the United Kingdom and a number of developed countries on the globe.
“Unlike most diseases that are stepped down by interventions in the epidemiological triad, pandemics are best exterminated by breaking the epidemiological link between host individuals. How we do this is by recognizing those with disease and quickly isolating them from the masses”.
“This project will go miles in providing simple measures to curb the rising numbers of afflicted-individuals in these times by identifying those among us that are sick and isolating them in a steadfast move”.
Its re-usability is based on the principle that unless the indicator has changed, the reagent chemical is still valid for a reaction. “Let’s say, unless the plate is broken, we can still use it to have another and another meal. “
He hopes institutions of public health management can pick up this piece and adds the tool can be modified to a number of industrial versions to fit consumer use.
