50-cent Paper Microscope Can Detect Diseases

The Foldscope, an origami-like microscope, is the size of a bookmark, virtually indestructible and costs only $0.50 to produce

Its creator, Manu Prakash, assistant professor of bioengineering at Stanford University, hopes such a microscope will allow for easier and more wider detection of blood-borne diseases like malaria, African sleeping sickness, schistosomiasis and Chagas. Each kind of Foldscope is for a specific disease, with 12 in total

“I wanted to make the best possible disease-detection instrument that we could almost distribute for free,” said Prakash to Scope, a medical blog run by the Stanford University School of Medicine. “What came out of this project is what we call use-and-throw microscopy.” Read more...