Kenyan firm Revital Healthcare unveils locally-made Rapid Malaria Diagnostic Test kits

According to Revital Healthcare, the kits have an accuracy of greater than 95% and are capable of detecting and distinguishing infection between the four species of malaria.

"These Malaria RDTs are first of it's kind in East to Central Africa, and with an accuracy of greater than 95% and capable of detecting and distinguishing infection between P. falciparum and other Plasmodium species (P. vivax, P. ovale, or P. malariae)," said the company in a statement.

The kits which have been approved by the Pharmacy and Poisons Board and recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO) provide results in 30 minutes.

“As we understand very well, testing is the first essential step to an effective diagnosis, without which no treatment would be effective.  Hence, Revital Healthcare, plans to introduce various other types of RDT's such as HIV, Pregnancy, Hepatitis, Tumor biomarkers and many more,” added the statement.

Previously Revital Healthcare produced the Rapid COVID Antigen test kits.

In October last year, the World Health Organization (WHO) approved the only vaccine against malaria saying it should be widely given to African children, potentially marking a major advance against a disease that kills hundreds of thousands of people annually.

The WHO recommendation is for Mosquirix - a vaccine developed by British drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline.

Since 2019, 2.3 million doses of Mosquirix have been administered to infants in Ghana, Kenya and Malawi in a large-scale pilot programme coordinated by the WHO. The majority of those whom the disease kills are aged under five.

That programme followed a decade of clinical trials in seven African countries.

Malaria is far more deadly than COVID-19 in Africa. It killed 386,000 Africans in 2019, according to a WHO estimate, compared with 212,000 confirmed deaths from COVID-19 in the past 18 months.

The WHO says 94% of malaria cases and deaths occur in Africa, a continent of 1.3 billion people.