By Kethen Kajumba
Uganda through the National Agricultural Research Organisation has embarked on the construction of a regional bio-security and bio-safety laboratory to boost the organisation’s diagnostics capacity.
The announcement was made to the media during a press briefing at National Livestock Resources Research Institute Nakyesasa, Busukuma in Wakiso district on Friday.
Prof. Justus Rutaisire NARO’s Director Corporate services said it will be a regional diagnostic laboratory that will ensure quick results and enable containment of the zoonotic diseases.
"This state of regional diagnostic laboratory will facilitate quick diagnosis and containment of the epidemic or disease as when they arise."
“The laboratory will help both Livestock and humans because diseases such as Marburg and Ebola attack both,” he added.
He also said the laboratory will save the organisation both money and time they were putting into exporting the samples out of the country for diagnosis which could take two months to get the results back and cost roughly US$2000 per sample.
The US Department of Defense through the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) has offered to construct a state of the art Regional Diagnostic Laboratory (RDL) for NARO.
Mr. Jon Wright a representative Defense Threat Reduction Agency(DTRA), said this is the fifth project sponsored by DTRA in Uganda and it will cost Us$ 1.6millions.
“The US Government has built facilities like these in other countries to control unique epidemics like ebola and Marburg. We believed that having one in Uganda would be strategic to service the wider community,” he said.
The construction of this Laboratory is expected to be completed in February 2019. The laboratory will specifically: enhance biosafety and biosecurity standards strengthen Uganda’s ability to detect, diagnose, conduct surveillance and enable reporting of emerging and re-emerging diseases of international security concern, in accordance with the World Health Organisation (WHO) International Health Regulations (IHR 2005) and World Health Organisation for Animal Health Guidelines (OIE).
With the presence of this Regional Diagnostic Laboratory, NARO - NaLIRRI will now be able to attract and conduct high quality collaborative research and boost capacity building thereby enhancing NARO’s profile in Animal Health Research globally.