Why the world needs an Essential Diagnostics List

Without diagnostics, medicine is blind. And yet, diagnostics receive much less attention than vaccines and drugs. Imagine a sick infant with bacterial sepsis in sub-Saharan Africa. Without diagnostics, they will likely get incorrectly treated for malaria. Every year, 1 million patients with TB in India are either not diagnosed or not reported. Pregnant women with anemia, syphilis and diabetes are often missed in low-income countries where laboratory capacity is severely lacking. And where there is testing, it is often of low quality.