Josinta Achieng, a medical laboratory technologist at Kisumu County Referral Hospital, demonstrates malaria testing using Sysmax XN31 machine. [Rodgers Otiso, Standard]
For years, diagnosing malaria at Kisumu County Referral Hospital has depended on a painstaking process that demands time, concentration and highly skilled laboratory hands.
A patient suspected of having malaria would have blood drawn, a slide prepared, stained and allowed to dry before a laboratory technologist sat behind a microscope, carefully moving from one field to another in search of parasites.
To declare a slide negative, the technologist may have to examine up to 100 fields, a process that can take between 10 and 15 minutes for a single sample.
But inside the hospital’s laboratory, that familiar routine is beginning to change.
A small volume of blood can now be placed in an automated analyser and, in about a minute, the machine can detect malaria parasites while simultaneously performing a complete blood count (CBC), providing information that can help determine whether a patient is anaemic.
Known as the Sysmex XN-31, the analyser is being piloted in Kisumu as part of the Project to Standardise and Disseminate Automated Anaemia and Malaria Testing Technology in Kenya.
The initiative brings together Sysmex Corporation, Sysmex East Africa, the Japan Institute for Health Security (JIHS), the Ministry of Health and the County Government of Kisumu.