SPECIAL SECTION: Analytical chemistry and developing nations
magine a mother bringing her feverish
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child to your rural clinic for treatment.
You suspect malaria, which kills >850,000 children under the age of 5 every year— most of them in sub-Saharan Africa. The electricity is out again, so you can’t turn on your microscope to look at a blood sample. The city hospital can run a PCRbased assay—they have reliable power and a steady supply of reagents—but a child this sick can’t travel there. So, you treat the child with quinine and hope that you’re right; it’s cheaper and faster than trying to diagnose the problem further. This scenario illustrates some of the challenges of life in developing regions: devastating diseases such as malaria, frequent power outages, and difficulty obtaining and storing the reagents required for diagnostic tests. Access to clean drinking water and good sanitation also may be inadequate. Scientists who work in these regions may find it hard to obtain technical training and replacement parts for equipment. In the pages that follow, our authors discuss these needs and explore the role of analytical chemistry in addressing them.
Elizabeth Zubritsky MANAGING EDITOR
© 2006 AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY
A U G U S T 1 , 2 0 0 6 / A N A LY T I C A L C H E M I S T R Y
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