MalariaSpot

Do you want to learn about malaria while you play hunting parasites in real blood samples? MalariaSpot is a game developed by researchers to help diagnose malaria. There are not enough specialists in the world to diagnose malaria... and you can help! We combine the results from several players to obtain an image analysis as reliable as the one made by a specialist.

New: we have lots of players from Tanzania, so we have added info about malaria in Tanzania. We might add soon info about malaria in other countries, such as Kenya. We have also included basic info about how you can prevent getting malaria, either if you live in Tanzania or you are just travelling.

Malaria is caused by mosquitoes bites. In fact, mosquitoes are the most mortiferous animals. They not only cause malaria, but other diseases as well: Zika virus, dengue, yellow fever...

The images you play with are photographies of real blood samples from patients from Mozambique and South Africa. While playing you will hunt for "Plasmodiums", the parasites responsible for malaria. The best you do it, the higher your score will be and the furthest you will advance in the game. Your goal? Find all the parasites in real blood samples from malaria patients.

You can find out more about the MalariaSpot Project at www.malariaspot.org

If you like MalariaSpot, help us leaving a review! And play our other game, TuberSpot

Thanks for helping us by playing! :)

*Some images have been kindly provided by Dr. John Frean from the National Institute for Communicable Diseases in Johannesburg (South Africa), and have been previously used to assess the possibility of using automated image processing systems to count the number of parasites in the research article "Reliable enumeration of malaria parasites in thick blood films using digital image analysis" (Malaria Journal 2009, 8:218).