Glasgow team to lead project developing diagnostics for Sub-Saharan Africa

The five-year Digital Innovations and Diagnostics for Infectious Diseases in Africa project (Didida), involves 14 partners from Kenya, Senegal, Tanzania, Uganda, the United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands, and Italy. It is supported by €6m (£5.2m) from the European Union’s Horizon Europe programme and €2m (£1.75m) from the UK Research and Innovation fund. 

The project will develop a graduate school in Sub-Saharan Africa with a cohort of 16 PhD students, drawn from areas including digital innovations, social science and healthcare economics. Cohort events will provide this new generation of researchers with the tools to become leading contributors in the fight against diseases in Africa.

The students will be part of a team which aims to develop innovations to improve the healthcare pathways of individuals in low-resource, under-served rural communities using digital medicine and mobile diagnostics.

Communicable diseases - severe respiratory infections, HIV/AIDS, diarrhoea, malaria, and tuberculosis - account for nearly 80 per cent of the total burden of infectious diseases in Africa, killing over six million people every year.