How the Tropical Laboratory Initiative is increasing Access to Healthcare in Low Resource Countries
Tropical Diseases were defined in the 1970s by international organisations such as the World Health Organization as those infectious ailments like malaria, tuberculosis, HIV and Ebola that disproportionately affect poor and marginalised populations in the developing world. Most of them still lack a vaccine, but it is only with adequate health policies that they can be defeated. With this awareness, the Earth Institute at Columbia University, headed by Professor Jeffrey Sachs, has developed the Millennium Villages Project as an innovative model for helping rural African communities lift themselves out of extreme poverty. Yanis Ben Amor, who holds a Ph.D. in molecular biology and has almost a decade of research experience in tuberculosis and HIV / AIDS in organisations such as the Pasteur Institute, directs the Tropical Laboratory Initiative and coordinates the tuberculosis and HIV / AIDS control programmes with the Millennium Villages Project, currently operating in 10 sub-Saharan African countries. In Berlin, he will explain the innovative idea of harnessing mobile phone technologies to provide increased access to laboratory diagnosis for the underserved in resource-constraint settings.