Leaders from the EAC partner states have commended the contribution of EAC Mobile Laboratories project in bolstering national COVID-19 response initiatives.

The laboratories are estimated to have analyzed more than 600,000 samples, reduced the turnaround time from three to five days to eight hours. Here, Uganda reported the shortest turnaround time of 5.5 hours.

They were deployed in the partner states mid-last year.

The two-day 9th Regional Steering Committee Meeting of the EAC Regional Network of Public Health Reference Laboratories for Communicable Diseases (EAC-RNPHRL) concluded on Friday in Kenya's capital Nairobi. 

Dr. John Ndemi Kiiru heads the Department of Laboratory Services in Kenya's health ministry. He said the laboratories project will greatly impact on the lives of East Africans in the short and long term.

“The labs have facilitated the partner states to undertake various initiatives that would have otherwise been impossible to undertake,” he is quoted as having said.

In Nairobi, the committee reviewed progress made in the implementation of the pending activities under the first phase of the project, whose implementation was interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The meeting also prioritized activities for the second phase of the project that was launched on June 11, 2021 at the EAC headquarters in Arusha, Tanzania.

The meeting underlined the urgent need to integrate the project into the existing National Public Health Laboratories and Ministry of Health programmes and existing structures to ensure the sustainability of the Mobile Laboratories Framework.

The committee reviewed the proposed technical specifications for equipment to be procured under the three-year second phase of the project.

'Evidence-based statistics'

It is hoped that the second phase will strengthen the capacities of the EAC partner states to respond to outbreaks of infectious diseases, including bacterial diseases and cross-border epidemics.

Here, reference was made to Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) surveillance in the region. AMR has been declared a global health and development threat requiring urgent multi-sectoral action to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.

WHO has declared AMR one of the top 10 global public health threats facing humanity, occasioned by the misuse and overuse of antimicrobials leading to the development of drug-resistant pathogens.

"We note that the second phase of the project will play a significant role in providing evidence-based statistics to inform policy development, taking into account the liberal prescription of antibiotics in the region," Dr. Isaac Kadowa, from Kenya's health ministry, is quoted as saying during the meeting.

He is the assistant commissioner of health services at the ministry.

The steering committee also called for a multi-sectoral approach to fast-track the procurement, customs clearance, and deployment of the mobile units in the region.

In November 2016, the EAC Secretariat signed a three-year financing agreement with Germany through the German Development Bank to support the establishment and operationalization of the EAC-RNPHRL.

The purpose of the laboratory network is to strengthen the capacity of partner states to detect and respond to pathogens of biosafety level 3 and 4 nature (Phase I).