The memory of medical missionary and anti-slavery campaigner Dr David Livingstone will be evoked when a field microscope to detect malaria, tuberculosis, infections caused by HIV/AIDS and other diseases is donated this month to a Malawi mining community.
Lab Without Walls, founded by Professor Tim Inglis of The University of Western Australia's School of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, aims to follow up microscope delivery by also providing training.
The microscope will be part of a community health program supported by Paladin Energy - which will help install the microscope - near its mining operations in the south-eastern African nation.
Lab Without Walls is a not-for-profit organisation supported by UWA, PathWest Laboratory Medicine, and industry. It provides laboratory services in remote and rural settings around the world, including TB diagnosis in East Timor and projects in remote Malaysia, central Sri Lanka and northern Australia.
About 14 million people live in Malawi. They have a low life expectancy and suffer from high infant mortality.
Dr Livingstone visited Lake Malawi in 1859. While in Africa, he famously met Welsh journalist and explorer Henry Stanley who supposedly said, "Dr Livingstone, I presume?"
The microscope will be presented to senior staff of Paladin Energy at noon on Friday 20 April at the School of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine.