Conference Agenda
Overview and details of the sessions of this conference. Please select a date or location to show only sessions at that day or location. Please select a single session for detailed view (with abstracts and downloads if available).
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CP3.1: Tropical Health 10 min talks sponsored by QIMR Berghofer, Centre for Tropical Health & Emerging Diseases Location: Lecture Theatre 3 Session Chair: Darren Gray, QIMR Berghofer Session Chair: Chika Zumuk, Queensland Institute of Medical Research | |
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Development and field-testing of point-of-care diagnostics for schistosomiasis elimination in the Philippines 1: Applied Tropical and Molecular Parasitology, QIMR Berghofer, Australia; 2: Faculty of Medicine, The University of Queensland, Australia; 3: Research Institute of Tropical Medicine, Muntinlupa City, Philippines; 4: Global Health and Tropical Medicine, QIMR Berghofer, Australia; 5: Molecular Helminthology, QIMR Berghofer, Australia Schistosomiasis caused by Schistosoma japonicum remains highly prevalent in the Philippines despite decades of preventive chemotherapy, partly due to the absence of accurate, field‑deployable diagnostics. We recently developed two semi–point‑of‑care diagnostics (POCs): (1) an equipment‑free cotton‑syringe stool DNA extraction device paired with portable quantitative PCR, and (2) a latex microsphere‑based lateral flow immunoassay detecting anti‑SjSAP4 antibodies in serum. Laboratory validation using infected human samples showed diagnostic performance comparable to established methods—87.7%/92.1% sensitivity/specificity for the cotton‑syringe system relative to Kato‑Katz (KK) and commercial stool qPCR, and 80.6%/98.0% for the anti‑SjSAP4 LFIA compared with KK. To evaluate field applicability, both POCs were deployed in six endemic Philippine villages, where community health workers were trained to perform the tests on residents (n=250 per village). Acceptability was assessed through questionnaires and focus group discussions. Preliminary findings highlight key challenges, including reluctance among health workers to handle stool samples and workflow bottlenecks during stool homogenization in the cotton‑syringe method. Addressing these operational pain points will be essential for improving uptake and ensuring that these POCs can support more accurate, community‑level schistosomiasis surveillance and monitoring. | |