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A total of 190 children were enrolled from 7 homes with males accounting for 89 (46.8%). The main reasons for admission into the orphanages were; orphaned 85 (44.7%), abandoned 79 (41.6%) and mental illness in mother 11(5.8%). Two children were HIV positive, giving a prevalence rate of 1.05%. All the homes (100%) had a policy which excluded admission of HIV positive children but seldom carried out HIV testing at entry. Fear of disease transmission to others was the reason given for not admitting such children. The policy which excluded admission of HIV infected children may have contributed to the low prevalence of the infection in the orphanages. There needs to be a reform on the current policies in order to reduce discrimination against HIV orphans.

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Coinfection with the tick‐transmitted pathogen Babesia spp. is becoming a serious health problem because of the erythrocyte invasion through Ixodes scapularis tick. The transmission of this protozoan by blood transfusion often results in high morbidity and mortality in recipients. A novel way to detect parasitized erythrocytes is by utilizing dielectrophoresis, an electrokinetic technique on a microfluidic platform, to improve the diagnostics of Babesia spp. The differences in the dielectric properties of Babesia spp.–infected erythrocytes versus healthy erythrocytes were exploited to design a fast and cost‐effective diagnostic tool. One crucial factor for a successful diagnostic platform via dielectrophoretic separation is the dielectric characterization of Babesia‐infected erythrocytes, which is investigated in this paper. The influence of medium conductivity and erythrocytes phenotype and genotype over the first crossover frequency (fco1) are used to quantify the dielectric properties of the infected cells. A sigmoidal curve was plotted via curve fitting of the single‐shell model, which has been proven appropriate for parasitized cell populations where considerable cell geometry variation occurs. The difference in these curves is relevant for the separation of cells population. Microliters of sample and reagent were used throughout this experiment; the scale, results obtained, and simplicity of the system often make it very suitable for point‐of‐care babesiosis disease diagnostics.

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