Foldscope Against Dengue!

Oct 27, 2016 • 4:41 AM UTC

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Mitali

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Hello Everyone,
Dengue is one of the major problems India and the world has been facing recently. Thousands of people across the world are being affected by it and since there is no cure for it as yet,it proves to be lethal in later stages.Medical treatment does help if the disease is diagnosed early.
Dengue is caused by the bite of a female Aedes mosquito which has been infected by the Dengue virus.It gets infected during a blood meal from a human already infected by the virus.Medical treatment does help if the disease is diagnosed early but in the later stages it may lead to hemorrhagic fever and death.I myself have suffered from Dengue and I know that it is very painful.It drops your platelet count drastically along with other common symptoms like fever, chills, nausea, terrible pain in the joints, sleeplessness, pain at the back of the eyes etc.
So the question is , How will our foldscope help us against Dengue ?
Recently, I was observing samples from Winogradsky’s column in our lab.One of the columns was not covered properly with a plastic and there were many organisms swimming in it.I decided to observe them.It was a Larva of some insect.Laks sir helped us identify it as an Aedes Mosquito Larva.
It was quite a reason to worry after knowing that there were so many Aedes Larva breeding in our own lab! Well atleast we could find out they were there and take care of it. 🙂

Wouldn’t it be awesome if all of us identified the larvae through our foldscopes and got rid of them?
It’ll really help us to reduce the sources of the vector!how great is that!and one by one if we all get rid of the sources of Larva, we will eventually reduce the number of cases of infection !!
Not only aedes Larva but we can identify the other ones as well 🙂 which will help us against Malaria and other diseases!

And one more thing before ending the post.When I was down with dengue, my platelet count had dropped drastically one thing that works like magic for this problem is juice of raw papaya leaves.J ust a teaspoon or two is enough for a day but it does help a lot.Do try this out if any of yours friends is suffering with the disease. 🙂
~Have fun Foldscoping.