Four students at Makerere University in Kampala have developed software called “Matibabu”, which will be able to diagnose malaria patients without a single prick on their skin, as well as showing them where the available treatment centre is located.

Matibabu is the first smartphone-based diagnosis system for malaria. The team Code8 from Uganda have developed this idea and also just won the Microsoft Imagine Cup as the first team from Africa. The mobile app can diagnose malaria without pricking the body. 

The idea was developed after one of the team members fell sick of malaria and went through a painful and traumatising process of needle pricks and they tried to draw blood out of his body to test for malaria. In addition, the whole process took over 30 minutes just to get the laboratory results.

Matibabu uses smartphone technology accompanied with a custom made piece of hardware to test for the presence of plasmodium in human blood, to learn if people are affected by malaria or not. In practical terms, Matibabu works with an app and a red light able to reach the red blood cells. In total, it takes maximum 1 minute to give a user the results. The team is still working on the final prototype due to some significant technological and economic obstacles.