̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Ghana

Innovation for Africa's Climate Future

plc32 — Wed, 25 Sep 2024 10:07:20 +0000

̽��ֱ��2024 Mastercard Foundation Scholars Program at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge Entrepreneurship Prize Competition recognises innovative ideas in agriculture, women’s health and digital technology.

̽��ֱ��psychiatrist who faced a dilemma but couldn’t turn his back on his people

cg605 — Mon, 23 May 2022 13:09:49 +0000

Children in West Africa with cognitive difficulties are going undiagnosed because the tests used to assess their mental health are based on Western norms. Kwabena Kusi-Mensah is working with communities in Nigeria and Ghana to develop assessments that are culturally appropriate.

Raise the floor: education that works for everyone

Anonymous — Mon, 24 Jan 2022 08:25:50 +0000

̽��ֱ��evidence that convinced the international community that putting disadvantaged children first creates education systems that work for everyone.

Global teamwork brings low-cost test for Weil's disease a step closer

amb206 — Mon, 10 Jul 2017 06:00:11 +0000

Each year an estimated 1.03 million people around the world, many of them in poor countries, contract leptospirosis, with 58,900 of these infections resulting in death. Better known as Weil’s disease, leptospirosis is spread by animals such as rats and transmitted to humans when they come into contact with food, water or soil that is contaminated by infected animal urine. ̽��ֱ��infection can be successfully treated if diagnosed early. Untreated, the disease can lead to death.

Diagnosis of leptospirosis presents problems: the infection shares symptoms with other diseases, including dengue, malaria and viral hepatitis. ̽��ֱ��only way to confirm the illness is to take a blood sample and run specialised diagnostic tests. This process can be time-consuming and expensive.

Now, a global collaboration between Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� and ̽��ֱ�� of Ghana researchers in biotechnology, pathology and manufacturing is bringing a cheap diagnostic test a step closer.

̽��ֱ��global project was made possible through the Royal Society’s Global Challenge Research Fund, which enables outstanding UK research leaders to develop international collaborations with the best leading researchers from around the world, to work on some of the global challenges and problems facing developing countries.

Lead researchers Professor Elizabeth (Lisa) Hall (Head of the Cambridge Analytical Biotechnology Group) and Dr Gordon Awandare (Director of the West African Centre for Cell Biology of Infectious Pathogens) are also working with engineers such as Dr Ronan Daly (IfM, Department of Engineering) to manufacture a single instrument, similar to the home pregnancy test, which will deliver accurate and rapid point-of-care diagnosis.

“Health practitioners need a simple test that enables them to detect the difference between bacterial and viral infections – such as leptospirosis and dengue – because they require very different treatments,” says Professor Hall.

“Our target is to develop a diagnostic test requiring a blood sample from a finger prick at a cost of less than $0.50 per test. ̽��ֱ��test has the potential to transform the way we diagnose and treat the one million people who contract leptospirosis every year.”

One of the most expensive components of the test for leptospirosis is the enzyme used to amplify the pathogen’s genetic material (DNA/RNA) to high enough levels to be detected.

“Specialist skills and refrigeration are required in traditional manufacturing of the enzyme,” says Professor Hall. “To overcome these barriers to local production, we’ve developed a technique that allows for direct purification of the enzyme from cell culture and packages it ready for use.”

̽��ֱ��team is also developing a novel technique to extract the pathogen’s DNA/RNA directly from the blood sample. “Both the DNA/RNA extraction system and the enzyme will be contained on a diagnostic card that can be manufactured locally – and ultimately from local materials,” says Professor Hall.

International cooperation has been crucial in the development of the test (see panel below). ̽��ֱ��Cambridge scientists are also working with Universiti Putra Malaysia – and would welcome new partners, both in the UK and overseas.

“We hope to deliver a sustained improvement in healthcare while also developing local economies. Local fabrication will drive sustainable local enterprise and help improve technological education,” says Dr Daly. “Leptospirosis has been recognised as a neglected disease by the World Health Organization and there is scope for taking a similar approach for developing point-of-care diagnostic tests for other treatable infectious diseases.

“They include food and waterborne diseases (bacterial diarrhoea, enteric fever, hepatitis A), vector-borne diseases (malaria, dengue, chikungunya and Zika), zoonotic diseases (leptospirosis, rabies) respiratory infections (influenza-like illnesses, pneumonia, tuberculosis) and HIV infection. These patients present with fever and a wide range of non-specific symptoms, which are difficult to diagnose without specialist laboratory tests. These may be expensive and/or unavailable, resulting in presumptive diagnosis and empirical treatment, which may be unnecessary, incorrect or potentially even harmful.”

̽��ֱ��various elements of the test are currently being developed in the lab, with the first protoype expected to be produced in 2018.

An on-the-spot, low-cost diagnostic test for leptospirosis (Weil's disease), a bacterial infection recognised as a neglected disease by the World Health Organization, could save lives in developing countries where there is little or no access to medical pathology laboratories and specialist technicians.

Our target is to develop a diagnostic test requiring a blood sample from a finger prick at a cost of less than $0.50 per test.

Lisa Hall

CDC Global/Evi Susanti Sinaga

Leptospirosis in farmers, Indonesia

Research partnership

Project leaders: Professor Lisa Hall (Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge), Professor Gordon Awandare (West African Centre for Cell Biology of Infectious Pathogens) and Dr Ronan Daly (IfM, Department of Engineering, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge)

Project members: Cassi Henderson, Dushanth Seevaratnam, Dr Hui Yee Chee

Partners: West African Centre for Cell Biology of Infectious Pathogens (WACCBIP); Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Universiti Putra Malaysia

Funding: Royal Society International Collaboration Awards for Research Professors, IC160089 (Hall/Awandare): UPM Sabbatical award (Chee); Gates Cambridge Scholarship (Henderson)

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes

Multiplier effect: the African PhD students who will grow African research

amb206 — Tue, 21 Feb 2017 11:15:37 +0000

“Africa needs a million new PhD researchers over the next decade.” It’s a huge figure. Professor David Dunne uses it to explain the scale of need in Africa for a new generation of scholars who will pioneer sustainable solutions to many of the continent’s challenges.

“There are world-class academics in Africa,” he explains, “but not enough to train and mentor all the young researchers that Africa needs to maintain and accelerate its progress. This is where Cambridge and other leading international universities can help, by making expertise and facilities available to help bridge this mentorship gap.”

Dunne is Director of the Cambridge-Africa Programme, a ̽��ֱ�� initiative that for the past eight years has been building collaborative links between Cambridge and Africa. ̽��ֱ��model is centred on Cambridge researchers helping to mentor young African researchers in their African universities and research Institutions. This contributes to research capacity building in Africa but also benefits Cambridge by widening the experience and opportunities for its researchers and students.

However, that stark fact remains – a great many more new researchers are needed. With this in mind, a new Cambridge-Africa PhD studentship scheme began to enrol PhD students last year from all over Africa – five per year, every year for five years. “It’s at least a beginning,” says Dunne. “We want this programme to grow in Cambridge, and other universities.”

One criterion is that the prospective student must be studying issues that are priorities for Africa. ̽��ֱ��research interests of the current students are broad: from urban growth to poverty, business associations to sustainable industries, infectious disease to post-conflict citizenship.

Taskeen Adam

Taskeen Adam is one of the PhD students. She’d worked as an electrical engineer for two years when she decided that she wanted to use her skills to bring about social change. “What attracted me to engineering was the challenge of solving technical problems. But my real passion is for humanitarian issues and the need to create quality education for all.”

In 2012, the United Nations General Assembly declared access to the internet as a basic human right. But figures from 2014 gathered for Taskeen’s home country of South Africa showed that more than 4,000 schools had no access to electricity and 77% of schools had no computers. Many thousands of children were missing out on the chance to learn the skills needed to make a better life.

Her research is enabling her to look at the educational opportunities afforded by the internet, in particular the potential of decolonised African MOOCs (Massive Online Open Courses) as a means for delivering inclusive educational programmes to the most marginalised learners in South Africa. She’s keen to develop an online educational framework adapted for, and relevant to, communities in developing countries.

Taskeen completed her first degree at the ̽��ֱ�� of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. On graduating, and while working full time, she pioneered an initiative called ‘Solar Powered Learning’ to give students in rural areas access to technology that was both low cost and environmentally friendly.

̽��ֱ��pilot project won Taskeen accolades. She was listed among South Africa’s Mail & Guardian’s top 200 Young South Africans for 2014. This gave her the confidence to embark on a career that would use her engineering skills in ways that could help to bridge inequalities.

As part of her Master’s research, she spent two weeks in Kigali, capital of Rwanda, where she visited schools benefiting from a national scheme to equip every child with a laptop. It was clear that this commendable programme was failing to enhance learning. Although resources were being provided, there was a lack of focus on maintenance skills, curriculum integration and teacher professional development. In many cases, the children were more comfortable using the laptops than were their teachers.

“My trip demonstrated the mismatch between the deliverables and the outcomes of the scheme. ̽��ֱ��focus was on technology deployment, rather than on improving educational attainment,” she says. “Many African governments seem to be following a similar path, and I hope that, by using the resources, networks and expertise here in Cambridge, I might eventually be able to influence policy changes at the intersection of education and technology back in Africa.”

Richmond Juvenile Ehwi

Richmond Juvenile Ehwi also hopes to take his skills and expertise back to his home country, Ghana. He has just arrived in Cambridge to start his PhD in Cambridge’s Department of Land Economy. After his first degree at Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah ̽��ֱ�� of Science and Technology, he worked as a research consultant and estate manager.

Moving to Ghana’s capital city, he became interested in the changes he saw in the property market. “Plush Western-designed detached houses, apartments and gated communities are springing up and I wondered what the future would be like for Ghana’s urban landscape. While this development mirrors Accra’s integration into the globalised city concept, accompanying this trend are social, economic, environmental and cultural costs.”

As Western lifestyles become increasingly popular, the older-style family compounds associated with traditional Ghanaian culture are declining, even in rural areas. “With literacy rates and standards of living rising, households are demanding greater privacy and better sanitation which, in most traditional compound houses, are greatly compromised,” he explains.

In the West, gated communities are often seen in a negative light: they are associated with segregation, racial polarisation and social exclusion. While accepting the realities of this criticism, Richmond seeks to facilitate a balanced discussion and inspire evidence-based planning policies.

He suggests that, as new gated residences develop in the suburbs, there can be both material and social benefits for surrounding areas. “In Ghana, the new gated communities tend to be multiracial rather than segregated according to race or nationality. ̽��ֱ��ability to pay for your house is what counts, not what you do or what your ethnicity is. Gated developments offer the security and services that most people aspire to,” he says.

Entire neighbourhoods can benefit from the expectations of the owners of the new properties, he explains: “It’s misleading to think of gated communities as isolated enclaves. People who live in them are not completely cut off from society. They travel to work, to malls and markets, to church services. These public spaces facilitate social interaction. Also, better-off households offer employment for gardeners, drivers and care givers – and help to raise incomes and opportunities.”

His long-term plan is to create an Urban Study Research Centre back in Accra, and to take back a deeper understanding of the interplay of economic factors with social and cultural issues in urban development.

̽��ֱ��multiplier effect

Dunne points to such plans as an indicator of the promise of the Cambridge-Africa PhD studentship scheme. “We are training 25 Cambridge-Africa scholars. It’s a small number compared with the overall need. But these researchers are a starting point. They will train other researchers and the expertise will multiply back in Africa.”

He adds: “It’s not just that Africa needs research and researchers for its own use. ̽��ֱ��world needs African researchers. We can’t have a situation where 14% of the world’s population – living on a continent with unique culture, diversity and environment – contributes less than 1% of published research output. ̽��ֱ��world needs the unique knowledge and perspective that African researchers can provide to solve our shared global challenges.”

̽��ֱ��Cambridge-Africa PhD studentship scheme is funded by the ̽��ֱ�� and the Cambridge Trust.

To keep up to date with the latest stories about Cambridge’s engagement with Africa, follow #CamAfrica on Twitter.

Taskeen Adam and Richmond Juvenile Ehwi are part of a PhD programme that’s enrolling five African students per year for five years, to help train world-class researchers for Africa.

̽��ֱ��world needs African researchers. We can’t have a situation where 14% of the world’s population – living on a continent with unique culture, diversity and environment – contributes less than 1% of published research output.

David Dunne

Nick Saffell

Taskeen Adam and Richmond Juvenile Ehwi

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes

Of cabbages and cows: increasing agricultural yields in Africa

lw355 — Mon, 13 Feb 2017 11:17:32 +0000

̽��ֱ��humble cabbage, universally despised by British schoolchildren, has found unexpected popularity on another continent. But just as the people of Ghana have developed an appetite – and a market – for this leafy green, so too has something else: a virus carried by aphids that causes the cabbages to wilt and die

By contrast, a parasite that emaciates cattle across sub-Saharan Africa has been around for thousands of years but continues to take its toll on certain species of the animals it infects. Prominent ribs are the frequent hallmarks of trypanosomiasis – caused by the presence of a cunning parasite that evades the animal’s immune system by periodically changing its protein ‘coat’.

Meanwhile, farmers in Ethiopia are turning away from the traditional zebu cattle towards breeds that produce greater quantities of milk. As a result they are exposing their herds – and themselves – to increasing levels of tuberculosis (TB) that are brought about by intensified animal husbandry practices.

What links cabbages and cows are three programmes that hope to connect fundamental research with improving farm yields, and in so doing contribute to solving a looming pan-African problem. More than half of global population growth between now and 2050 is expected to occur in Africa. And more people means a requirement for more food.

Ethiopia, for example, has the largest livestock population in Africa but, with a growing population and increasing urbanisation, even its 53 million cattle are not enough. And now efforts to intensify farming in the country are bringing a significant health concern. “ ̽��ֱ��new breeds are more vulnerable than zebu to bovine TB,” explains Professor James Wood from Cambridge’s Department of Veterinary Medicine. “This may have health implications for those who work with and live alongside infected cattle, and also raises concerns about transmission to areas with previously low TB.”

Wood leads a £2.9 million research programme, ETHICOBOTS, which is looking at the feasibility of control strategies, including cattle vaccination. ̽��ֱ��programme combines partners in eight Ethiopian and UK institutions, and brings together veterinary scientists, epidemiologists, geneticists, immunologists and social scientists. “We need this mix because we are not only asking how effective strategies will be, but also whether farmers will accept them, and what the consequences are for prosperity and wellbeing.”

̽��ֱ��difference that increasing productivity can have on farmers’ livelihoods is not lost on an insect expert at the ̽��ֱ�� of Ghana, Dr Ken Fening, who is working on another food-related research project. Cabbages are not indigenous to the continent but have become a major cash crop for Ghanaian farmers and an important source of income for traders to markets and hotels.

“A good crop can bring in money to buy fertilisers and farm equipment, and also help to pay for healthcare and education for the family,” he says. Recently, however, fields of stunted, yellowing, wilting cabbages, their leaves curled and dotted with mould, have become an all too familiar and devastating sight for the farmers of Ghana.

From his field station base in Kpong, Ghana, Fening works closely with smallholder farmers on pest control strategies. Two years ago they started reporting that a new disease was attacking their crops. “It seemed to be associated with massive infestations of pink and green aphids,” says Fening, “and from my studies of the way insects interact with many different vegetables, I’m familiar with the types of damage they can cause.”

Farmers were typically seeing the total loss of their crops and he realised that the devastation couldn’t just be caused by sap-sucking insects. Despite no previous reports of viral diseases affecting cabbage crops in Ghana, the symptoms suggested a viral pathogen.

With funding through the CAPREx programme, Fening began work with Cambridge plant biologist Dr John Carr. ̽��ֱ��pair collected samples of cabbage plants in Ghana showing signs of disease, and also aphids on the diseased plants. Back in Cambridge, Fening used screening techniques including a type of DNA ‘fingerprinting’ to identify the aphid species, and sophisticated molecular biology methods to try to identify the offending virus.

“Aphids are a common carrier of plant-infecting viruses,” explains Carr, whose research is funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council as part of the £16 million SCPRID (Sustainable Crop Production Research for International Development) initiative. “ ̽��ֱ��‘usual suspects’ are turnip mosaic virus and cauliflower mosaic virus, which affect cabbages in Europe and the US.”

“We found that two different species of aphids, pink and green, were generally found on the diseased cabbages,” says Fening. “It turned out this was the first record of the green aphid species, Lipaphis erysimi (Kaltenbach), ever being seen in Ghana.” ̽��ֱ��pink aphid was identified as Myzus persicae (Sulzer).

What’s more, the virus was not what Carr expected, and work is now ongoing to identify the culprit. ̽��ֱ��sooner it can be characterised, the sooner sustainable crop protection strategies can be developed to prevent further spread of the disease not only in Ghana, but also in other countries in the region.

Another researcher who hopes that eradication strategies will be the outcome of her research project is Dr Theresa Manful. Like Fening, she is a researcher at the ̽��ֱ�� of Ghana and a CAPREx fellow. She has been working with Cambridge biochemist Professor Mark Carrington on African animal trypanosomiasis.

̽��ֱ��trypanosome that causes the disease is carried by the tsetse fly, which colonises vast swathes of sub-Saharan Africa. “This is a major constraint to cattle rearing in Africa,” she explains. “Although trypanosomiasis is also a disease of humans, the number of cases is low, and the more serious concerns about the disease relate to the economic impact on agricultural production.”

Carrington has worked for a quarter of a century on the parasite that causes the disease. He understands how the organism evades the immune system of the animal by changing its coat proteins so as to remain ‘invisible’.

“When you first start working on these parasites you are enamoured with the molecular mechanisms, which we now know a huge amount about,” he says. “But then when you look at the effect on large animals like cows you realise that there is almost nothing known about the dynamics of an infection, and even whether an infection acquired at an early age persists for its lifetime.”

Manful and Carrington set about testing herds in Ghana. They discovered that several trypanosome species can be found in the cattle at one time and that nearly all cattle were infected most of the time.

For Manful, one of the important gains has been the ability to expand the research in Ghana: “I now have a fully functional lab and can do DNA extraction and analysis in Ghana – I don’t have to bring samples to Cambridge. We are teaching students from five Ghanaian institutions the diagnostic methods.” She and Carrington have been recently funded through a Royal Society Leverhulme Trust Africa Award to continue their work.

“Agriculture faces increasing challenges,” adds Carr. “Bioscience is playing a crucial part in developing ways to mitigate pest impact and reduce the spread of parasites.

“We want to ensure not only that every harvest is successful, but also that it’s maximally successful.”

ETHICOBOTS is funded under the Zoonoses and Emerging Livestock Systems (ZELS) programme, a research initiative in the UK jointly funded by six research council and government bodies. Dr Ken Fening and Dr Theresa Manful were funded by the Cambridge-Africa Partnership for Research Excellence (CAPREx) and ̽��ֱ��ALBORADA Trust, through the Cambridge-Africa Programme.

Images: top: cabbage aphids (credit: Dr Ken Fening); bottom: cattle in Ghana (credit: Dr Theresa Manful and Professor Mark Carrington).

To keep up to date with the latest stories about Cambridge’s engagement with Africa, follow #CamAfrica on Twitter.

Africa’s food requirements, along with its population, are growing fast. Three research programmes ask how a better understanding of viruses, parasites and the spread of disease can pave the way to improving agricultural yields.

A good crop can bring in money to buy fertilisers and farm equipment, and also help to pay for healthcare and education for the family

Ken Fening

Hendrik Terbeck

Greengrocer at Arusha Market

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes

Licence type:

Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike

Keeping the lights on in Ghana

sc604 — Tue, 07 Feb 2017 09:00:56 +0000

In Ghana, ‘Dumsor’ is a part of life. An annoyance, a risk, an impediment to be sure, but a part of life all the same.

̽��ֱ��half-joking, half-serious term, which roughly translates to ‘off-and-on’, refers to the frequent blackouts in the country. Entire neighbourhoods go dark in an instant. ̽��ֱ��patchwork electrical grid can leave one side of a street in darkness and the other fully lit. So widespread are the blackouts that John Mahama, until recently the country’s President, was often referred to as ‘Mr Dumsor’ by Ghanaians.

Like many countries in sub-Saharan Africa, Ghana doesn’t produce enough power to meet demand. Its power supply has been erratic since the early 2000s, when water levels in the Akosombo Dam, the country’s main hydroelectric dam, dropped to dangerously low levels, and they have yet to recover fully. Although Ghana has one of the highest rates of access to electricity in Africa, in 2015 the country still experienced blackouts on 159 days.

“Ghana’s not so different from the UK, really – both countries have an electrical grid that’s under enormous strain,” says Dr Kevin Knowles of Cambridge’s Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy. “ ̽��ֱ��difference is we’d be up in arms if the lights went out all the time, whereas in Ghana it’s just a fact of life. But there are things that researchers in Ghana are doing to help improve the electrical infrastructure.”

One such researcher is Dr Abu Yaya, Head of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the ̽��ֱ�� of Ghana. Yaya has been working with Knowles with the aim of developing a home-grown industry back in Ghana to make a small but crucial component for power transmission: electroporcelain.

For electricity to get from the places where it is generated, such as the Akosombo Dam, to homes and businesses, it needs a well-established electrical grid made up of pylons, substations and transmission lines. Whereas high-voltage power lines are insulated by the surrounding air, a physical insulator is required at the point where the power lines are supported by utility poles or transmission towers, or where power lines enter buildings. These insulators prevent the loss of current and concentrate its flow, as well as help prevent electric shock.

Most insulators for high-voltage power transmission are made from glass or porcelain. Knowles describes the electroporcelain manufacturing industry as “mature”. In fact, in the UK it’s been around since the 1860s – a reason perhaps why the insulators can look curiously old-fashioned and incongruous, like small white ceramic bowls or brown spiral candlesticks perched on the arms of pylons.

However, despite the prevalence of raw materials to make electroporcelain in Ghana, electroporcelain ceramics are imported from other countries at great expense.

Ghana’s not so different from the UK, really – both countries have an electrical grid that’s under enormous strain. ̽��ֱ��difference is we’d be up in arms if the lights went out all the time, whereas in Ghana it’s just a fact of life
Kevin Knowles

It’s a frustrating situation says Yaya, who has now developed a method of making electrical insulators out of the materials available in Ghana. His aim is to scale up the process for commercial use in the country, and possibly to other sub-Saharan countries as well. ̽��ֱ��process is economical because all it needs is the raw materials, water and a furnace.

Yaya grew up in the slums in Nima, a suburb of Accra in Ghana. After completing his undergraduate studies in his home country, he received funding from the European Union to complete his Master’s degree in materials science at the ̽��ֱ�� of Aveiro, Portugal, and the ̽��ֱ�� of Aalborg, Denmark, and his PhD at the ̽��ֱ�� of Nantes, France, after which he returned home to take up a post at the ̽��ֱ�� of Ghana.

It was when he returned to Ghana that Yaya first became interested in developing electroporcelain, after a discussion with a retired lab technician who had a stockpile of clays and feldspar, but wasn’t sure what to do with it. “I figured out the clays and feldspar could be used to make electroporcelain, and at the same time I realised that Ghana imports all of its electroporcelain from Asian countries,” he says. “So I asked myself why can’t we make these products – and that is how I ended up in Cambridge.”

In 2015, Yaya won a six-month CAPREx fellowship at Cambridge to work with Knowles, an expert in materials for use in challenging engineering environments. Most of Knowles’ research focuses on how small changes to the microstructure of materials can improve their mechanical, electronic or optical properties for use in components such as connecting rods, fan blades, glass and fuel cells.

“In electroporcelain, the raw materials are clay, feldspar and silica,” explains Knowles. “When these raw materials are mixed together in the right proportions and fired together, at a temperature such as 1,200°C, an electrical insulator is produced. What happens during firing is that the feldspar melts and this helps to bind the particles together inducing further chemical reactions and reducing porosity. ̽��ֱ��result is a dense product that can be given a surface glaze to enable it to pass national safety standards tests for porcelain insulators.”

Yaya adds: “Normally, imported electroporcelains are made to suit the original country’s specifications, and are not made specifically for Ghana or other African countries, where the climatic conditions could vary. By producing these products in Ghana using local raw materials, they are subjected to our own environmental conditions.

They would be sent to the Ghana Standards Authority for further testing to ensure that failure does not occur rapidly when the electroporcelains are in use.”

Dumsor is an irritation at times but it also shows the power crisis we must overcome
Abu Yaya

As well as working closely with Knowles, Yaya has also spent time working with UK-based company Almath Crucibles to optimise his process. His aim from the outset was to develop a manufacturing process for electroporcelain that would meet international standards so it can be sold to Ghana’s electricity company.

It’s a crucial time for Ghana, which has committed itself to universal electricity access by 2020. Making sure the electricity supply is widely available and reliable will aid the growth of industries and the economic development of the country. It will also support the demand for power by an increasing population.

“If we are able to manufacture insulators in Ghana then they will be far more affordable than imported insulators, and we stand a better chance of expanding our electrical infrastructure to improve capacity,” explains Yaya. Meanwhile, foreign investors are beginning to take notice of Ghana’s richness in materials: in August 2016, a Chinese-owned company opened the first phase of a US$60m factory in the Free Zone in Eshiem in Ghana to manufacture floor tiles and other ceramic products to supply domestic and international ceramics markets.

Yaya continues to collaborate with Knowles, as well as with other researchers in Europe. He is currently in the process of patenting his technique through a ̽��ֱ�� of Ghana Technology Transfer Grant, and is now looking for potential commercial partners to help him bring the technology from a laboratory to an industrial scale.

“Dumsor is an irritation at times but it also shows the power crisis we must overcome,” he says. “We need to be sure that limitations in generating and distributing electricity do not become a development challenge for the country.

Dr Abu Yaya is at the ̽��ֱ�� of Ghana. His research with Dr Kevin Knowles was funded by the Cambridge-Africa Partnership for Research Excellence (CAPREx) and ̽��ֱ��ALBORADA Trust, through the Cambridge-Africa Programme.

To keep up to date with the latest stories about Cambridge’s engagement with Africa, follow #CamAfrica on Twitter.

When Ghanaian Abu Yaya wondered why his country imports all of its electroporcelain – a small but crucial component for electrical power transmission – it led to a collaboration with Cambridge materials scientist Kevin Knowles that might one day result in Ghana being able to reduce its frequent blackouts.

So I asked myself why can’t we make these products – and that is how I ended up in Cambridge"

Abu Yaya

jbdodane on flickr

Akosombo Dam, Ghana

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes

Reducing number of infectious malaria parasites in donated blood could help prevent transmission during transfusion

cjb250 — Thu, 21 Apr 2016 22:30:45 +0000

Malaria is a blood-borne disease caused by the malaria parasite – in west Africa, this is mainly Plasmodium falciparum. ̽��ֱ��parasite is mainly transmitted to humans through mosquito bites. In sub-Saharan Africa, malaria infection is endemic and a substantial proportion of the population carries the parasite, even when individuals do not show any symptoms. Only a few blood centres screen donor blood of the parasite and hence there is a high risk of malaria transmission through transfusion.

Because of resource limitations, the most common red blood cell product transfused is whole blood. A half of all blood donors in Ghana carry detectable levels of malaria parasites in the blood and as many as one in four (between 14-28%) of blood recipients become infected.

̽��ֱ��Mirasol pathogen reduction technology system, developed by the US-based Japanese company Terumo BCT, has been developed to treat whole blood using ultraviolet light energy and riboflavin (vitamin B2) to reduce the parasite load and to inactivate white blood cells. It has been shown to reduce P. falciparum load in vitro and to maintain adequate blood quality during 21 days of cold storage.

In a study published today in ̽��ֱ��Lancet and funded by Terumo BCT, researchers report the results of the African Investigation of the Mirasol System (AIMS) trial, which explored whether the use of blood treated with Mirasol would prevent the transmission of malaria to patients with anaemia being supported with whole blood transfusion.

“In developing countries, blood supplies are often contaminated and blood banking systems cannot afford the newest technologies for detecting blood-borne pathogens,” explains Professor Jean-Pierre Allain from the Department of Haematology at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge. “Technologies aimed at reducing the levels of parasites or infectious agents in the blood could benefit individual patients and also health-care systems.”

̽��ֱ��trial involved 214 patients, 107 of whom received Mirasol-treated blood, the remainder of whom received the normal blood products. Overall, 65 patients who previously were free of detectable parasites were transfused with blood retrospectively found to contain parasites – 28 of these blood products had been treated with Mirasol, 37 were untreated.

̽��ֱ��incidence of transfusion-transmitted malaria was significantly lower for those patients who received the treated blood (one out of 28 patients, or 4%) compared to the untreated group (eight out of 37 patients, or 22%).

At the same time, the safety profile did not differ for patients receiving treated or untreated whole blood units. ̽��ֱ��treated whole blood group had fewer allergic reactions to the transfusion (5% vs 8%) and fewer overall reactions (8% vs 13%), possibly because of the technology also inactivates white blood cells including immune cells.

̽��ֱ��researchers recognise that the overall number of transmissions was small, reducing the power of the study, but believe it still provides a clear indication that the Mirasol system could make a dramatic difference to the number of cases of malaria transmission via blood transfusion.

“This could be a real game-changer for blood safety in sub-Saharan African,” adds Dr Shirley Owusu-Ofori from the Transfusion Medicine Unit, Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital, Kumasi, Ghana. “Reduced transfusion-transmissions of infectious agents means a more stable blood supply, reduced costs for the treatment of preventable infections, and direct benefits to women and children who are especially vulnerable to malaria.”

Reference
Allain, JP et al. Effect of Plasmodium inactivation in whole blood on the incidence of blood transfusion-transmitted malaria in endemic regions: the African Investigation of the Mirasol System (AIMS) randomised controlled trial. Lancet; 23 April 2016; DOI 10.1016/S0140-6736(16)00581-X

Declaration of interests
Jean-Pierre Allain, Alex Owusu-Ofori and Shirley Owusu-Ofori have received grants from Terumo BCT. Susanne Marschner is an employee of Terumo BCT. Raymond Goodrich is an employee of Terumo BCT and owns patents assigned to Terumo BCT. Sonny Michael Assennato declares no competing interests. Terumo BCT did not interfere with the basic design of the study, nor in the conducting of the trial or the interpretation of the data.

A technique for reducing the number of infectious malaria parasites in whole blood could significantly reduce the number of cases of transmission of malaria through blood transfusion, according to a collaboration between researchers in Cambridge, UK, and Kumasi, Ghana.

This could be a real game-changer for blood safety in sub-Saharan African

Shirley Owusu-Ofori

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