Revolutionizing vaginal health.
Easy, fast and accesible vaginal infection tests
Selva provides accessible, rapid vaginal infection testing for women in Latin America. With our innovative solution that enables women to differentiate between fungal and bacterial infections from home, Selva empowers women with accurate test results, guiding appropriate medication choices for better health.
Current healthcare landscape
The problem
Vaginal infections are a pressing issue that is not enough talked about.
In most emerging countries, the route to healthcare is intricate and complicated. This means that women need to go through a lot of challenges to get proper care. The average wait time for a gynecologist appointment is two months, but it can go well above six months. The discomfort caused by symptoms of a vaginal infection can be incredibly unbearable, and women shouldn't have to endure prolonged waiting times to see a gynecologist. Because of this, women often choose to self-diagnose and self-medicate, risking misdiagnosis that lead to ineffective treatment that could worsen the infection. Others choose to do nothing, increasing the risk of contracting STDs as well as the potential for the infection to spread.
What we do at
We offer a 2-in-1 colorimetric test. Our product assess for vaginal pH and biogenic amines, a metabolic byproduct characteristic of the microorganisms that cause bacterial vaginal infections. Because the pH of bacterial and fungal infections is very different, we test the pH value of the vaginal discharge and translate it into colorimetric solutions to make it easier to interpret for women. Additionally, we increase the positive predictive value of our test and set ourselves apart from other solutions by leveraging the function of the DAO and peroxidase enzymes. With them, we do a second test that will only be positive in the presence of biogenic amines that come from bacteria, thereby differencing between bacterial and fungal infections and guiding women towards the right medication to purchase.
Three out of four women encounter a yeast infection at some point in their lives, with two out of four experiencing recurrence. On top of that, there are bacterial infections as well, affecting one out of four women each year. The challenge is discriminating between these two types of infections in order to know what kind of medication to use.
