Rapid test equipment for leprosy

Early detection and treatment of leprosy is important, especially before it infects others and causes serious damage to the patient's body. The good news is that the OrangeLife Laboratory in Brazil has successfully built a rapid leprosy testing device that is not only compact, easy to use but also very cheap.

The device, about half the size of a credit card and costing about $ 1, provides a blood test to diagnose leprosy and give results in just 10 minutes. Accordingly, when a drop of blood is placed on the test strip, the internal reaction strip will detect antibodies against the infection. Just like a pregnancy test, if 2 tiles appear, the result is positive, and 1 tile is negative.

Marco Collovati, president of OrangeLife, said: 'This test allows us to detect the disease early before the patient's injury affects nerves and deformity.' This is considered a real revolution after more than 3,000 years of discovering the disease that made patients feel guilty and isolated from society.

According to Collovati, with an accuracy of about 90%, this test strip will detect most cases of early stage leprosy, 10% failure only occurs when the patient produces too few antibodies. This device promises to benefit poor people living in remote areas, where diagnosis and treatment is often difficult.