In the courtyard of a maximum security prison in Maputo, Mozambique, a man with a shaved head, in an orange T-shirt crossed out with the word “inmate”, waits patiently, his chest facing a large white tablet hung vertically.
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Behind him, a nurse presses the button on the portable lungs.
AI makes it possible to read the radio precisely and instantly, without requiring the expertise of a doctor.
“It’s real time, we have the results in less than five minutes,” explains the caregiver.
AFP
The image soon appears on the screen of a technician, installed a few meters away, accompanied by a diagnosis: “Radiological signs suggestive of tuberculosis — negative”, displays the computer.
The test is part of a pilot project to examine inmates in three prisons in the Mozambican capital run by Stop TB, an organization supported by the United Nations.
AFP
Overcrowded prisons are a hotbed of tuberculosis, the second deadliest disease in the world, after Covid, and which infected more than ten million people in 2022 and killed 1.3 million, according to the WHO.
Nearly one in four people who contracted the disease last year were in Africa. Mozambique, which has a population of 32 million, has recorded around 120,000 cases.
Early diagnosis helps save lives and stop the spread, because while chronic cough is a hallmark of TB, some carriers show no symptoms.
This is particularly true in prison, where tuberculosis spreads through the air and crowded cells provide breeding ground.
According to the United Nations, Mozambique’s prisons were approximately 50% over capacity in 2022.
“Science fiction”
The portable X-ray machine, aided by AI, improves traditional diagnosis because it is faster than skin or blood tests which must be analyzed in the laboratory. In addition, it does not require patients to travel and does without radiologists, who may be rare in rural areas or poor countries, explains Suvanand Sahu, deputy director of Stop TB.
“It’s a big technological step forward,” he enthuses.
At the provincial penitentiary in Maputo, Mozambique’s capital, inmates who test positive are quarantined behind a rusty metal door.
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Inside, a dozen men wearing masks sit on mattresses on the floor, while clothes, blankets and other personal belongings hang from a rope fixed between two faded blue pillars. Serious cases are taken to the infirmary.
“It’s not easy to see your comrades stretch out, play, but you have to accept that I’m sick,” confides Kennet Fortune, detained for ten years on a drug charge, pointing to the trees in the courtyard. the prison.
Testing positive for tuberculosis, he is currently undergoing treatment which may take months. “When the time comes, I will come out.”
Earlier this month, a WHO report found that the number of deaths from tuberculosis worldwide declined in 2022, a sign of progress in eradicating the disease.
And 7.5 million people were newly diagnosed over the same period, the highest figure since WHO began monitoring TB in 1995.
Stop TB’s Mr Sahu hopes the success of pilot projects like Mozambique’s will help secure funding to scale up the use of AI and wearable radios, and beat the disease.
“Only a few years ago, if I had said at a meeting that we could bring X-rays everywhere that would be read by a machine without the use of radiologists, I would have been told to go write a novel of science fiction,” he smiles.