Tuberculosis (TB) continues to cause significant mortality and morbidity throughout the world, especially in HIV-infected individuals. Increases in drug resistant TB cases have been occurring in many high endemic countries that have limited resources to identify and diagnose patients. Standard diagnostic techniques for TB include sputum smear microscopy to detect acid fast bacilli and microbiological culture confirmation. As a result, diagnosis of TB is both difficult and time consuming, especially in smear-negative, HIV-infected and pediatric patients. Molecular technologies are under development for TB case detection and identification of drug resistance mutations in lower levels of the health care system. The goal of this solicitation is to develop an inexpensive (less than $10), easy to use device for processing sputum samples to obtain purified DNA for TB testing to be used in a rural clinic setting with minimal infrastructure.
