Today I had the opportunity to share Foldscope with professors and masters of public health students at CIES-UNAN in Managua, Nicaragua. As well as medical students from UNAN in Managua. Many thanks to everyone for joining us today and to Francisco Mayoraga and Dr. Miguel Orozco (pictured above far left and right, respectively) for organizing the workshop.

There was so much excitement from everyone! Quickly, here are a few of my own photos and data from this afternoon:

Next are a few images I was able to capture through the Foldscope during the workshop. I also encourage everyone there that might now be reading this to create their own account and share theirs as well. The first is a blood smear with a Wright stain, brought courtesy of the medical students. The second is of a flower petal and some beautiful segmented trichomes that we found just outside the door.

Some of the major questions were:

How to track where you are (such as when you need to count cells from a number of different fields of view).

Is it possible to adapt with immersion oil?

Is it reuseable? (of course!)

Applications in Nicaragua:

Many students were very excited about using this in rural areas and testing the ability of the Foldscope vs. their standard microscopes.

One comment I thought may be interesting is the potential to use the Foldscope for testing agglutination to assess blood type compatibility and syphilis infection in the field. Any ideas of how to accomplish this?

Tomorrow we are off to an elementary school to share microscopy with the students! Looking forward to sharing more soon.

– Josh