Egypt’s army claims AIDS-detecting ‘scientific breakthrough’

In what has been dubbed a “unprecedented scientific breakthrough,” Egyptian military engineers have claimed to have developed a device that can detect AIDS and Hepatitis C infections without the need to take blood samples.

The device, named C-fast, has also been touted to "eliminate the C virus with a cost tens of times less that its foreign likes, and is 90 percent successful," an Egyptian army spokesman said in a statement.

Colonel Ahmad Mohamed Ali Egypt Al Arabiya

The spokesman, Ahmed Mohamed Ali, said the army engineering division had received a patent for its achievement, noting that a similarly successful device was developed to detect H1N1 virus and experimented at army hospitals.

It is not yet clear, however, how the device works.

“Similar devices have been invented by bioengineers at Harvard as well as at the University of Illinois. The first requires merely a small saliva sample that scans for the genetic code of HIV. The latter requires a small prick of blood to read a sample and search for the virus,” according to online news site Egypt Independent.

Egypt has the highest prevalence of hepatitis C virus in the world, estimated nationally at 14.7%.

"C-Fast is a revolutionary means of using bomb detection technology to scan for hepatitis C – a strongly contested discovery that, if proven, would contradict received scientific understanding, and potentially change the way many diseases are diagnosed," the Guardian reported.