Infectious disease ranks among the gravest threats to human health, alongside global warming and terrorism. New disease strains are naturally continuously emerging and resulting outbreaks can spread rapidly, with the potential to cause enormous losses to health and livelihood.
Worldwide, however, many infections remain undetected. Due to poor diagnostic tools, infection is often undiagnosed and therefore untreated, or diagnosed at a late stage when treatment is less effective. This results in on-going transmission of serious infections (for example HIV and MRSA) and delays in the identification of emerging threats (for example pandemic influenza), which may lead to major human and economic consequences for millions of people.
The best strategic approach to control any outbreak is to identify the source of infection at an early stage and halt its spread, or prevent the outbreak altogether. To do this, we rely on very early detection.
Our research into early warning sensing systems for infectious diseases focuses on influenza, MRSA and HIV - though our technologies could potentially be applied to other disease areas.
To learn more about influenza, bacterial infections and HIV, and why early diagnosis is crucial, please click the images below:
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