A rapid saliva test to assess protection against disease and monitor vaccination in low-middle income countries

挽救生命的儿童疫苗接种未能惠及全世界约2500万儿童。由于2019冠状病毒病大流行，世界各地许多人错过了基本疫苗，增加了罹患严重疾病的风险。破伤风是一种死亡率很高的细菌感染，但可以通过接种疫苗来预防。破伤风是常规接种的关键疫苗之一，但接种这种疫苗的人数已降至许多年前的较低水平。消除破伤风是20多年来的目标。许多国家已经实现了这一目标，但在中低收入国家，这种疾病仍然是一个问题，每年继续造成不必要的死亡。监测疫苗接种并了解有多少人得到了预防疾病的保护是很重要的，但直接做到这一点可能具有挑战性。掌握有关免疫（预防疾病）的信息有助于了解疫苗接种计划的效果，并有助于找到未受保护和需要接种疫苗的个人。然而，测试免疫力目前需要血液样本。在血液中检测免疫力可能很昂贵，而且一些国家无法做到这一点。此外，并不是每个人都希望抽血，从儿童身上抽血是不可取的。我们将开发一种低成本的检测方法，使免疫检测变得简单、快速，而且不需要采血。这种测试使用唾液，是一种侧流测试，这是一种现在为公众所熟知的测试。该测试能在15分钟内显示一个人是否能预防破伤风。如果一个人对破伤风没有保护，他们也可能失去对其他严重疾病的保护，并且没有接受所有推荐的疫苗接种。该检测可在任何地方使用（外联、社区、诊所、医院），并可改善目前无法获得免疫检测的人获得免疫检测的机会。在这个项目中，我们将在一家专业公司的帮助下开发我们的唾液测试。我们将花时间尝试各种材料和方法来构建测试，以获得最好的发明。我们的目标是在测试中尽可能少地使用塑料。我们还将找出收集唾液进行测试的最简单方法。然后，我们会在实验室里进行大量唾液样本的测试，以检查测试的效果。如果测试同样有效，那么它将被送到马拉维（非洲的一个低收入国家）的一项研究中。在这项研究中，我们将看到我们的测试在现实生活中的效果如何，并找出当地人对测试的适应程度。如果项目成功，我们打算在其他国家试用该测试，以衡量不同社区的免疫力，改善疫苗接种监测和规划。

Live saving childhood vaccinations fail to reach ~25 million children worldwide. As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, many people across the world have missed out on essential vaccines, increasing those at risk of serious disease. Tetanus is a bacterial infection with a high death rate but is preventable with vaccination. Tetanus is one of the key vaccines given routinely but the amount of people receiving this vaccine has slipped back to lower levels seen many years ago. Eliminating tetanus has been an aim for over 20 years. This has been achieved in many countries but in low-middle income countries this disease is still a problem and continues to cause unnecessary deaths every year. It is important to monitor vaccination and understand how many people are protected against disease, but this can be challenging to do directly. Having information on immunity (protection from disease) is helpful to understand how well vaccination plans are working and help find individuals who are unprotected and need vaccination. However, testing immunity currently requires blood samples. Testing immunity in blood can be expensive and some countries are unable to do it. Also, not everyone wishes to have blood taken and taking blood from children is not desirable. We will develop a low-cost test that enables immunity to be tested easily, quickly, and without taking blood. The test uses saliva and is a lateral flow test, a type of test which is now well known to the public. The test shows if a person is/is not protected against tetanus within 15 minutes. If a person is unprotected against tetanus, they are also likely missing protection against other serious diseases and have not received all recommended vaccinations. The test can be used anywhere (outreach, community, clinic, hospital) and can improve access to immunity testing for those who currently are unable to do so. In this project we will develop our saliva test with help from an expert company. We will spend time trying various materials and ways to build the test to get the best invention. We are aiming to use as little plastic as possible in our test. We will also find out the easiest way to collect saliva to run the test. Then we will run lots of saliva samples on our test in a laboratory to check how well the test works. If the test works as well, it will then be sent to be included in a study in Malawi (a low-income country in Africa). In this study, we will see how well our test works in real-life and find out how suitable local people find the test. If successful, after the project we intend to try out the test in other countries to measure immunity among different communities, to improve vaccination monitoring and planning.