Water-borne diseases are a leading cause of child mortality in Madagascar. Systematic water quality monitoring can help detect and prevent the spread of water-borne illness, but such capacity currently only exists in the capital.

To address this, this project will generate a general, scalable model for enabling high school students to use frugal technologies, such as foldscopes and planktoscopes, to systematically monitor water quality across Madagascar. Doing so will help estimate disease risk and forecast related environmental challenges.

The project will leverage Stanford’s recently established “Deep Profiling” citizen-science network to train and support Madagascar high school students to deploy a Frugal Al Sentinel System. Through this system, students will become environmental guardians who monitor planetary and human health in real-time while developing the skills and knowledge to support future careers in global and planetary health.

“We hope the acquired data will drive planetary health interventions that break the water-diarrhea-malnutrition cycle in Madagascar, with the world’s fourth highest malnutrition rate, and serve as a model for other developing countries with similar burdens,” said Co-PI Dr. Mark Krasnow, the Paul and Mildred Berg Professor of Biochemistry and Director of the Beckman Center for Molecular and Genetic Medicine.

Principal Investigators:

Mark Krasnow, MD, PhD, Paul and Mildred Berg Professor; Professor of Biochemistry; Director, Beckman Center for Molecular and Genetic Medicine; Dr. Manu Prakash, PhD, Associate Professor of Bioengineering; Senior Fellow, Woods Institute for the Environment; Dr. Robert Siegel, MD, PhD, Professor (Teaching) of Microbiology.

Student lead:

Diane Richard, grad student in Environmental Engineering

Funder:

Stanford Center for Innovation in Global Health