The healthcare system in Ghana encounters considerable obstacles, such as restricted access to diagnostic services, prolonged wait times for test outcomes, and overcrowded medical facilities, especially in rural regions. Nevertheless, the implementation of point-of-care (POC) sensors can transform healthcare delivery by enabling swift, precise, and cost-effective diagnostic testing at the patient’s location or rural clinics.
What are point-of-care sensors?
Point-of-care (POC) sensors are simple and easy-to-use platforms/devices capable of analyzing saliva, serum, blood, and urine samples in a matter of minutes, identifying diseases such as cancer, malaria, and SARS-CoV-2 without requiring costly laboratory equipment. In a nation like Ghana, where numerous patients must journey significant distances to reach medical laboratories, these sensors have revolutionary potential.
Benefits to Ghana’s healthcare
Faster diagnosis and treatment: These platforms deliver real-time results for conditions such as hypertensive disorders during pregnancy, HIV, and diabetes, facilitating prompt clinical decisions and minimizing treatment delays.
Easy access to healthcare: Point-of-care sensors allow for quick testing in isolated or underserved locations, eliminating the necessity for centralized laboratories.
Cost efficiency. Point-of-care testing minimizes the necessity for hospitalization and the related expenses by facilitating early diagnosis.
Areas of potential application in Ghana’s healthcare
Cancer detection: The 2020 Globocan cancer report indicates that 24,009 new cancer cases occur annually in Ghana. Out of the number, 15,802 people lost their lives. That is a 66% mortality rate. This high mortality rate stems from a lack of treatment facilities and late-stage cancer detection. Point-of-care (POC) sensors can help alleviate this problem by providing early cancer screening options at low cost, which can even to done at home. Early identification of cancer is essential as it greatly enhances the likelihood of effective treatment and improved survival rates
Ishmeal Kwaku Duah, a PhD candidate at the University of Cincinnati, is among the leading researchers in the field of point-of-care sensors development. In an article he reported in the ACS Analytical Chemistry Journal (https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.analchem.4c02121), he developed a point-of-care sensor on glass fiber that can be used in the detection of BRAF V600E DNA in serum using nanozyme as a signal amplification element to achieve high sensitivity. Overexpression of BRAF V600E in the body is linked to several cancers, such as melanoma, papillary thyroid cancers, colorectal cancer, and breast cancer. This sensor is easy to use as the presence of the BRAF V600E DNA can be detected with the naked eye through colour change. In this paper, Ishmeal Kwaku Duah emphasized that with appropriate design, this POC sensor can be easily modified for different target analytes, such as diabetes, malaria, and HIV.
Malaria detection: According to the World Health Organization’s 2023 malaria report, Ghana ranks among the 15 countries with the highest malaria burden globally, representing 4% of malaria cases in West Africa. Despite the country’s long-standing commitment to malaria prevention and control efforts, which have shown consistent improvement according to international metrics, it still accounts for 2.1% of global malaria cases and 1.9% of global malaria fatalities. Therefore, it is critical to alleviate the burden of malaria within the nation. POC sensors can be used to detect malaria at an early stage to reduce the mortality rate.
In a paper published by Felix Ansah, a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Ghana in Electrochimica Acta (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.electacta.2022.140988), he reported an ultrasensitive electrochemical genosensor for malaria detection. This genosensor is capable of directly identifying the malaria parasite nucleic acid without the need for pre-amplification.
Furthermore, in 2020, Xue Jiang and Peter B. Lillehoj published an article on detecting Plasmodium falciparum histidine-rich protein 2 (PfHRP2), a biomarker for malaria infection, using a lateral flow immunochromatographic sensor. This sensor offered speed and ease-of-use with a higher detection sensitivity, making it suitable for point-of-care malaria detection.
Conclusion
Despite the challenges of funding, training, and maintenance, collaborations among government entities, the private sector, and international health organizations can promote the integration of this technology. Investing in point-of-care sensors is essential, not merely an enhancement, but for establishing a more efficient, equitable, and responsive healthcare system in Ghana. By adopting point-of-care sensors into healthcare systems, Ghana can make significant progress towards achieving universal health coverage and potentially save numerous lives.
