SADC lab for Zimbabwe

Project Coordinator for Communicable Diseases at the Botswana-based SADC secretariat, Innocent Modisaotsile, said an advanced laboratory in South Africa that most of the region has relied on was now oversubscribed which had led to a drop in the standard of work at the lab.

Because of huge backlogs at the South African lab, some countries in the region had to send pathological samples to laboratories in countries as far as Australia and the United States for analysis.

Modisaotsile said: As SADC we lacked capacity in terms of super national laboratories for cases like HIV and Multi drug resistant TB testing. As a result, some samples were not receiving the required attention in terms of analysis resulting in some patients being released from hospitals when in fact they were not healed.

This has resulted in same diseases like TB becoming very resistant to drugs. If only proper analysis was followed on samples through the availability of good laboratories, diseases such as TB would be controlled as patients will be only discharged once fully recovered from our hospitals. It is against this background that we are planning on a new lab to be based in Zimbabwe.

Modisaotsile added that the laboratory would serve the whole region.