The new public health facility, which will also support African Union (AU) members in monitoring and responding to outbreaks, features state-of-the-art technology and will promote collaboration in building member states’ capacity for systems and robust laboratory networks.
The latter will improve clinical care and facilitate technology transfer to African institutions, said the AU-affiliated health authority.
Africa CDC Director General Jean Kaseya commended the Chinese government for its support in achieving a new public health order and architecture on the continent that can prevent, detect and respond to any type of threat in the sector.
According to Kaseya, this will be one of the most important results in terms of a new public health order that we are promoting to make the centers a world-class organization and “China supports the African public health agenda.”
For his part, the head of the Beijing Mission to the AU, Hu Changchun, said that the new laboratory opens a new chapter for public health in Africa and will give new impetus to cooperation on the continent.
Deputy Administrator of the National Administration for Disease Prevention and Control of China and Director General of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention Shen Hongbing expressed the same sentiment, recalling that the government of the Asian giant always attaches great importance to it has established relations with Africa.
Hongbing reiterated that this government is committed to promoting technical exchanges and public health cooperation between China and African countries.
As a center of excellence, the laboratory will conduct antimicrobial susceptibility testing for resistance monitoring, biochemical analysis, multiplex molecular diagnostics, biobanking and advanced genome sequencing of pathogens.
It also includes, among other things, the ability to perform metagenomic sequencing to identify unknown diseases.
rgh/nmr