Establishment of COVID-19 testing laboratory in resource-limited settings: challenges and prospects reported from Ethiopia

Global Health Action
Adugna AberaAshenafi Assefa

Abstract

The Coronavirus pandemic is recording unprecedented deaths worldwide. The temporal distribution and burden of the disease varies from setting to setting based on economic status, demography and geographic location. A rapid increase in the number of COVID-19 cases is being reported in Africa as of June 2020. Ethiopia reported the first COVID-19 case on 13 March 2020. Limited molecular laboratory capacity in resource constrained settings is a challenge in the diagnosis of the ever-increasing cases and the overall management of the disease. In this article, the Ethiopian Public Health Institute (EPHI) shares the experience, challenges and prospects in the rapid establishment of one of its COVID-19 testing laboratories from available resources. The first steps in establishing the COVID-19 molecular testing laboratory were i) identifying a suitable space ii) renovating it and iii) mobilizing materials including consumables, mainly from the Malaria and Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs) research team at the EPHI. A chain of experimental design was set up with distinct laboratories to standardize the extraction of samples, preparation of the master mix and detection. At the commencement of sample reception and testing, laboratory cont...Continue Reading

References

Apr 10, 2020·Journal of Clinical Microbiology·Arun K NallaAlexander L Greninger
May 7, 2020·JAMA : the Journal of the American Medical Association·Nandini SethuramanAkihide Ryo

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Methods Mentioned

BETA
electrophoresis
PCR
nucleic acid extraction

Software Mentioned

QuantStudio
ABI 7500

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