Malaria is a public health problem that affects remote areas worldwide. Climate change has contributed to the problem by allowing for the survival of Anopheles in previously uninhabited areas. As such, several groups have made developing news systems for the automated diagnosis of malaria a priority. The objective of this study was to develop a new, automated, mobile device-based diagnostic system for malaria. The system uses Giemsa-stained peripheral blood samples combined with light microscopy to identify the Plasmodium falciparum species in the ring stage of development. The system uses image processing and artificial intelligence techniques as well as a known face detection algorithm to identify Plasmodium parasites. The algorithm is based on integral image and haar-like features concepts, and makes use of weak classifiers with adaptive boosting learning. The search scope of the learning algorithm is reduced in the preprocessing step by removing the background around blood cells. As a proof of concept experiment, the tool was used on 555 malaria-positive and 777 malaria-negative previously-made slides. The accuracy of the system was, on average, 91%, meaning that for every 100 parasite-infected samples, 91 were identified correctly. Accessibility barriers of low-resource countries can be addressed with low-cost diagnostic tools. Our system, developed for mobile devices (mobile phones and tablets), addresses this by enabling access to health centers in remote communities, and importantly, not depending on extensive malaria expertise or expensive diagnostic detection equipment.

El artículo da cuenta de un estudio internacional realizado entre octubre de 2011 y enero de 2012, como fundamento para el diseño y elaboración de un material audiovisual (spot) con el objeto de sensibilizar y visibilizar la problemática del Chagas. La investigación, de carácter cualitativo, recogió los datos de 38 encuestas, respondidas por personas afectadas y especialistas en la temática. La información para cada grupo se ordenó según aspectos que las personas asociaban con la palabra Chagas, y dificultades, retos, desafíos y logros vinculados. Para cada punto se presenta un análisis de las respuestas, relatos y anécdotas relacionadas. Las conclusiones refuerzan la necesidad de conocer y dar a conocer las dificultades que viven las personas afectadas por el Chagas, considerando que se trata de una realidad que tiene diversas manifestaciones dependiendo del contexto.

Chagas disease (CD) is endemic in countries of continental Latin America. Congenital transmission is a major concern worldwide. In 2010, the Public Health Agency of Catalonia (ASPCAT) launched a screening protocol for Trypanosoma cruzi infection in pregnant women and their newborns. In 2012, ASPCAT detected appropriate follow-up of pregnant women but incomplete information about their offspring.