Breaking the Wall of Tropical Diseases

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Tropical diseases were defined in the 1970s as infectious ailments - like malaria, tuberculosis, HIV, and Ebola - that disproportionately affect poor and marginalized populations in the developing world. Guided by the awareness that adequate health policies can help defeat such diseases, Columbia University's Earth Institute, headed by Professor Jeffrey Sachs, has developed the Millennium Villages Project as a model for helping rural African communities to rise out of extreme poverty. Dr. Yanis Ben Amor - a molecular biologist with almost a decade of tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS research experience in organizations such as the Pasteur Institute - directs the Tropical Laboratory Initiative and coordinates the tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS control programs of the Millennium Villages Project, currently operating in ten sub-Saharan countries. In this Falling Walls lecture, Ben Amor explains the innovative ideas of harnessing mobile phone technologies to provide increased access to laboratory diagnosis for underserved populations in resource-constraint settings.