Thanks so much for reading — and great question!

Rapid diagnosis testing (RDT) is absolutely crucial to preventing the spread of malaria, drug-resistant and otherwise. I don’t know the stats off the top of my head, but if you can diagnose and treat someone within the first couple days of illness, there’s a much lower risk of a mosquito acquiring the parasite from them and spreading the disease. People become more contagious several days after full-blown untreated malaria.

RDT isn’t perfect, especially in places like the Mekong where scientists are trying to achieve complete elimination. It only detects a certain parasite load in someone’s blood — meaning that the someone can have malaria parasites but have the test show up negative. To that end, it’s best if RDT is paired with the ability to do more sensitive lab testing.

What do you think, @Gilles_METF? What’s the role that rapid rural detection can play?