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Diseases, beware: A chemist may have found a way to detect you sooner.

Imagine being hit with a dangerously high fever hundreds of miles away from the nearest hospital.

You live in a rural area, have little money for treatment or transportation, and don't have an easy way to physically get to the hospital.

When you're eventually able to see a doctor and take some tests, that's when he tells you some disconcerting news — you have malaria, your condition has already worsened, and now your treatment options are limited.

If only there had been a way to find out sooner, when more could be done.

The streets of Timbuktu in Mali. Image via iStock.

That's the harsh reality many people face in sub-Saharan Africa when it comes to malaria.

According to UNICEF, more than a million people die from malaria each year, and 90% of those cases of malaria occur in sub-Saharan Africa. What's even more heartbreaking is that the majority of those deaths are children under the age of 5.

Malaria also hurts the continent economically — Africa loses up to $12 billion every year due to a loss in productivity.

A close-up of the culprit. Image via CDC Global/Flickr.

Luckily, chemists at Ohio State University are developing a way to test for malaria without having to visit a doctor.

And all the patient needs is a piece of paper!

This would help people get malaria diagnoses sooner — if the test is positive, they know it's critical to go to the doctor, and when they do go, it would already be for treatment and not just for testing.

Currently, patients can take a Rapid Diagnostic Test (RDT) to find out if they have malaria or not, but the climate in Africa combined with the considerable expense of the test often prevent it from being an option. However, these are issues a new home test can address.

Image by Pam Frost Gorder, used with permission.

The man leading this charge is Abraham Badu-Tawiah, an assistant professor of chemistry and biology at Ohio State.

Having grown up in Ghana, he knew he wanted to come up with a way to provide an accurate diagnosis for people far away from a proper medical facility.

"Our main motivation is really to get to know whether you’re sick or not sick early enough so that we don’t wait or think it’s too late," said Badu-Tawiah. "If it’s just in the initial stages, you can actually take your time and do something to focus on getting well."

So how does this piece of paper work?

As a patient, all you would need to do is put a drop of blood in the reservoir, fold the paper in half, stick it in an envelope and then mail it to their lab. After a round of testing, you get your results. That's it!

Image by Pam Frost Gorder, used with permission.

The paper itself uses a special wax ink that creates a barrier to keep the blood sample in place. It's also charged with ionic probes that can tag the specific antibodies that act as biomarkers (basically, indicators) of a particular disease. Even better, the ionic probes aren't affected by light, temperature, or humidity and can keep the sample intact for up to 30 days — ideal for patients in sub-Saharan Africa.

Once the lab has the paper, they just dip it in an ammonia solution, peel the layers apart and put it in front of a mass spectrometer — the device that can find the disease biomarker and tell whether someone is sick or not.

Right now, the testing needs to be done in special labs because mass spectrometers aren't immediately available in developing nations and they're very expensive. However, smaller, less expensive ones are already in the process of being developed. So help is on the way!

It's also possible to use this device to test for certain cancers. In time, hopefully all of them.

In the Journal of the American Chemical Society, Badu-Tawiah and his colleagues state that they can test for any disease where the human body produces antibodies. This includes ovarian cancer and cancer of the large intestine.

But they're not stopping there.

"It will cover all kinds of cancer eventually when we advance in knowledge," added Badu-Tawiah. "What we need is to be able to identify a specific biomarker for each cancer."

The paper is designed to be very affordable at just 50 cents a piece.

Image by Pam Frost Gorder, used with permission.

And that number could go even lower once they enter mass production. Access for all, regardless of location, is incredibly important to Badu-Tawiah.

"Making the resources accessible to a lot of people I think is the solution. That’s why I came up with this idea to build a bridge and to connect the rural and the cities," he said. "This will be useful for a lot of people, not only in Africa, but in the U.S. and many other places. It will change lives."

The scientists are also working very hard to make the testing process less invasive and more comprehensive.

Image by Pam Frost Gorder, used with permission.

"Our next move is actually going down from blood to saliva and then to urine," says Badu-Tawiah. "We are really hopeful that within a few years, this will come to fruition."

They're also developing a separate method that is able to detect malaria, syphilis, HIV, and tuberculosis all on the same device.

Pretty amazing, right?

This type of research has the potential to change how the world approaches deadly diseases.

Just thinking about how a drop of blood on a piece of paper could potentially replace a long journey to a testing facility is an exciting development.

In places from Africa to the U.S., this kind of innovation could one day be available at the corner drug store. It has a long way to go, but the prospects so far are exciting.

In this instance, it really is the smallest things — like a 50-cent piece of paper — that can make the biggest difference.

National Geographic Documentary Films

Family

Nat Geo's 'Blink' tracks a family finding beauty while facing blindness as they travel the globe

“Let's go all in and fill their visual memory with as much beauty as we can."

via Edith Lemay/NatGeo

Mia, Leo, Colin, and Laurent Pelletier pose on top of their camper van in front of adouble rainbow while in Mongolia.

True

“Blink,” a new film by National Geographic Documentary Films shows how a family with four children, three of whom are going blind, embraces life in the face of an uncertain future. It’s a testament to the resilience of the Lemay-Pelletier family but also a reminder for all of us to seize the day because all our futures are uncertain.

Edith Lemay and Sébastien Pelletier are the parents of Mia, a 13-year-old girl, and three boys: Léo, 11, Colin, 9, and Laurent, 7. Over the last six years, they’ve learned that Mia and the two youngest boys have retinitis pigmentosa, a rare genetic disease in which the cells of the retina slowly die. As the disease progresses, the person develops “tunnel vision” that shrinks until very little vision remains.

The diagnosis devastated the parents. "The hardest part with the diagnosis was inaction. There's nothing they can do about it. There's no treatment,” Edith says in the film.

However, even though the parents couldn’t affect the progress of the disease, they could give their children’s senses an epic experience that would benefit them for a lifetime.

“We don’t know how fast it’s going to go, but we expect them to be completely blind by mid-life,” said the parents. Mia’s impairment advisor suggested they fill her visual memory with pictures from books. “I thought, I’m not going to show her an elephant in a book; I’m going to take her to see a real elephant,” Edith explains in the film. “And I’m going to fill her visual memory with the best, most beautiful images I can.”

The Pelletier family (from left): Mia, Sebastien, Colin, Edith Lemay, Laurent and Leo inKuujjuaq, Canada.via National Geographic/Katie Orlinsky

This realization led to an inspiring year-long journey across 24 countries, during which every family member experienced something on their bucket list. Mia swam with dolphins, Edith rode a hot-air balloon in Cappadocia, and Léo saw elephants on safari.

Colin realized his dream of sleeping on a moving train while Sébastien saw the historic site of Angkor Wat.

“We were focusing on sights,” explains Pelletier. “We were also focusing a lot on fauna and flora. We’ve seen incredible animals in Africa but also elsewhere. So we were really trying to make them see things that they wouldn’t have seen at home and have the most incredible experiences.”

Cameras followed the family for 76 days as they traveled to far-flung locales, including Namibia, Mongolia, Egypt, Laos, Nepal and Turkey. Along the way, the family made friends with local people and wildlife. In a heartbreaking scene, the boys wept as the family had to leave behind a dog named Bella he befriended in the mountains of Nepal.

But the film isn't just about the wonders of nature and family camaraderie. The family's trip becomes a “nightmare” when they are trapped in a cable car suspended hundreds of feet above the Ecuadorian forest for over 10 hours.

annapurna range, blink, nat geo Leo, Laurent, Edith, Colin, Mia, and Sebastien look out at the mountains in the Annapurna range.via MRC/Jean-Sébastien Francoeur

As expected, NatGeo’s cinematographers beautifully capture the family's journey, and in the case of “Blink,” this majestic vision is of even greater importance. In some of the film's quietest moments, we see the children taking in the world's wonders, from the vast White Desert in Egypt to a fearless butterfly in Nepal, with the full knowledge that their sight will fail one day.

Along the way, the family took as many pictures as possible to reinforce the memories they made on their adventure. “Maybe they’ll be able to look at the photographs and the pictures and they will bring back those stories, those memories, of the family together,” Edith says.

But the film is about more than travel adventures and the pain of grief; ultimately, it’s about family.

“By balancing [the parents’ grief] with a more innocent and joyous tale of childlike wonder and discovery, we felt we could go beyond a mere catalog of locations and capture something universal,” the directors Edmund Stenson and Daniel Roher, said in a statement. “Keeping our camera at kid-height and intimately close to the family, we aimed to immerse the audience in the observational realities of their daily life, as well as the subtle relationships between each of them. This is a film built on looks, gestures and tiny details—the very fabric of our relationships with one another.”

Ultimately, “Blink” is a great film to see with your loved ones because it’s a beautiful reminder to appreciate the wonders of our world, the gift of our senses and the beauty of family.

The film will open in over 150 theaters in the U.S. and Canada beginning Oct. 4 and will debut on National Geographic Channel and stream on Disney+ and Hulu later this year. Visit the “Blink” website for more information.

From Your Site Articles

national geographic

Family

People applauded after Mark Wahlberg confronted the DJ at his daughter's dance party

Dad to the rescue.

via TheEllenShow / YouTube

Mark Wahlberg on "The Ellen Show."

Actor Mark Wahlberg recently attended a daddy-daughter dance with his 10-year-old, Grace. Sadly, Grace had no interest in seeing her father strutting his stuff on the dance floor.

"I didn't get one dance," Wahlberg told Ellen DeGeneres. "And I told her we were going to do the whole big circle and I was going to go off. And she said, 'Dad, if you embarrass me, I will never talk to you again.' But what she did do is she hung out with me."

No matter who your dad is, especially if you're a 10-year-old-girl, you have zero desire to see him dance in front of your friends.

But the parents at the dance probably would have had a blast seeing Wahlberg bust out some of his old-school '90s Marky Mark moves.

However, Wahlberg couldn't help but leave his mark on the music being played at the dance.

Let's not forget, he didn't get famous for his acting but for showing off his abs in the "Good Vibrations" video.

Being that Wahlberg's time as a pop star was three decades ago, he couldn't believe it when he heard the music being played at the dance.

"[Grace] sat there on the edge of the stage, by the DJ. And then I'm sitting there with one other dad and I'm like, 'This is not an edited version of this song. There are explicit lyrics being played at a school dance for girls and I'm like no good,'" he said.

"I told the DJ and he's like, 'Oh, I thought it was.' I said, 'What are you doing?' I'm hearing F-bombs and this and that's not okay," Wahlberg said.

He's right. There's no place for music with explicit lyrics at a dance for 10-year-old children.

Wahlberg says the DJ didn't know he wasn't playing the edited version, but it's probably more likely that he didn't even realize the song was a problem. Pop music these days is filled with a numbing amount of violent and misogynistic lyrics.

A recent study from the University of Missouri found that nearly one-third of pop songs contain lyrics that degrade or demean women by portraying them as submissive or sexually objectified.

Currently, three of the top five songs on the Billboard Top 40 contain the word "bitch." One of them is sung in Korean.

It's odd that Americans have become more sensitive to misogyny in pop culture in films, television, and comedy, but still have a huge cultural blind-spot when it comes to music.

That's not a good thing, especially when pop music is marketed to teenagers.

"We know that music has a strong impact on young people and how they view their role in society," said Cynthia Frisby, a professor in the Missouri School of Journalism.

"Unlike rap or hip-hop, pop music tends to have a bubbly, uplifting sound that is meant to draw listeners in," Frisby continued. "But that can be problematic if the lyrics beneath the sound are promoting violence and misogynistic behavior."

Let's face it, pop stars are role models. Their examples show young people what to wear and how to behave. That's not to say that kids will blindly follow someone just because they like their music. But it has an undeniable effect.

Wahlberg, and any parent who monitors what their kids are listening to, deserve credit for protecting the minds and hearts of their kids.

Frisby has some great advice for parents concerned about negative imagery in pop music.

"Ask your daughters and sons what songs they like to listen to and have conversations about how the songs might impact their identity," Frisby said.

"For example, many songs might make young girls feel like they have to look and act provocative in order to get a boy to like them, when that isn't necessarily the case. If children and teens understand that what they are hearing isn't healthy behavior, then they might be more likely to challenge what they hear on the radio."