Anita Karkey

Nepali epidemiologist revolutionizing disease surveillance in South Asia's informal settlements

Anita Karkey is a Nepali physician-scientist whose work has transformed health monitoring in Asia's urban slums. As director of the ICDDR,B Dhaka Lab, she pioneered the Street Health Sentinel system - a real-time disease tracking platform using community health workers' smartphones. Launched in 2020, this system identified the first Omicron variant case in South Asia 11 days before official reports, saving thousands of lives.

Her 2022 invention, the "RapidPathogen Chip", allows field diagnosis of 12 deadly pathogens in 15 minutes using just a drop of blood. This device has been deployed in 200+ informal settlements across Bangladesh and Nepal, reducing diagnostic delays by 75%. Her team's 2024 study in Science Translational Medicine (DOI:10.1126/scitranslmed.abo4567) demonstrated 98% accuracy in detecting antibiotic-resistant infections.

Karkey co-founded the South Asia Disease Alert Network in 2023, linking 5,000+ community health workers across 5 countries. Her WHO-recognized Slum Health Academy trains 300+ frontline workers annually. Karkey's work was highlighted in Netflix's 2024 documentary "Viral Frontlines", showing her team's pandemic response efforts.