Fig. 1

Sampling diagram. Malaria patients donated 2–3 ml of venous blood, which was left to precipitate for approximately 30 min (1) prior to removal of the plasma and buffy coat, using a Pasteur pipette (2). A new Pasteur pipette was used to add PBS to the erythrocytes, and the tube was inverted 3–4 times to mix PBS and erythrocytes (3). The PBS-diluted erythrocytes were then sucked into a syringe, which was applied to a Plasmodipur filter, and pressure was applied until the entire sample had been filtered (4). The filtered PBS-diluted erythrocytes were then left to precipitate for approximately 3 h, before the PBS was removed using yet another Pasteur pipette (5). The erythrocytes were finally dotted on Whatman filter paper #3, as three Pasteur-pipette drops per spot (6)