6 February 2025 | Media
South-South Diagnostic Alliance 2025 Impact Report
By SSDxA
This Impact Report documents a year-long effort to examine why access to effective dengue diagnostics remains limited in endemic countries, despite the availability of scientific knowledge and diagnostic technologies. Drawing on evidence from multiple dengue-endemic settings, the report demonstrates that the core barriers to diagnostics access are not technological scarcity, but systemic misalignment—between diagnostic design and real-world use, between global standards and local realities, and between innovation and industrial pathways capable of sustaining access at scale.
Through structured expert engagement and cross-country analysis, the report identifies four interrelated diagnostic gaps that continue to undermine dengue detection and response: inconsistent performance of point-of-care tests, the absence of validated self-testing strategies, limited access to affordable and rapid molecular diagnostics, and the lack of scalable prognostic tools to identify severe dengue early. These gaps are shown to disproportionately affect primary care systems, outbreak response, and vulnerable populations, particularly women and children.
The report outlines how an evidence-led, system-based approach can translate these gaps into actionable priorities. Rather than treating diagnostics as standalone products, the findings emphasise the need for integrated solutions, combining minimum performance standards, local validation, and health system integration. Particular attention is given to lateral flow diagnostics, which hold significant potential for frontline care, but would benefit from shared evaluation protocols and locally relevant benchmarks to ensure consistent performance and trust.
A central contribution of the report is its examination of industrial and market dynamics. It demonstrates how dependence on externally manufactured diagnostics has created vulnerabilities in affordability, supply security, and relevance. In response, the report presents an alternative South–South industrial pathway that links research evidence directly to manufacturing, technology adaptation, and deployment. Early partnerships highlighted in the report illustrate how regional manufacturers, when engaged through clear standards and co-development models, can contribute to more resilient and context-appropriate diagnostic supply.
Country-level pathways, including initial implementation planning in Malaysia and Sri Lanka, show how this approach can move from analysis to practice. These case examples illustrate how diagnostics can be embedded within national systems—supported by digital tools for result interpretation, referral, and surveillance—rather than deployed as fragmented pilot interventions.
Taken together, the report provides evidence that improving diagnostics access in endemic countries requires a shift in how problems are framed and solved. It argues for moving away from donor-driven, product-centric models toward coordinated, country-led systems that align research leadership, industrial capacity, and public health priorities. While the focus is on dengue, the insights and frameworks presented are intended to inform broader efforts to strengthen diagnostics as a cornerstone of health security and equity across the Global South.