AfricaPress-Tanzania: BURUNDI has received its share of mobile laboratory containing equipment and consumables, including Covid-19 testing kits.
The laboratory that was donated to the East African Community (EAC), by the Federal Republic of Germany through the German Development Bank (KfW), was handed over at the Kobero border post on the Burundi-Tanzania border.
The lab was handed over by Mr Wilberforce Mariki, the Director of Planning at the EAC Secretariat, who disclosed that the mobile labs project was an initiative of the Community to strengthen Public Health Reference Laboratories network within the six EAC partner states.
Mr Mariki said that the project would enhance the capacity of the partner states to detect and respond to pathogens that could result in epidemics or pandemics in the region such as Ebola and the coronavirus.
He hailed Germany for assisting EAC with the necessary financial and technical support to get the mobile labs running.
In addition to the items being handed over to the partner states, the project had also purchased Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR), machines that would be dispatched to the Partner States once they are delivered to the Secretariat, in order to complete the testing capacity of each mobile lab.
Two trainers of trainers and two drivers have already been trained by the project to enable them handle the labs effectively.
Receiving the consignment, the Director General of the National Institute for Public Health in Burundi, Professor Joseph Nyandwi, thanked the EAC Secretariat for the support that he said came in at a time the country and the world was fighting to curb the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic.
A total of nine mobile laboratories are being deployed to the partner states, with Burundi, Rwanda and South Sudan getting one each; Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania each getting two.
