Tecan Freedom Evo NAP

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During the COVID-19 outbreak, the Molecular diagnostic laboratory at the MRCG was the only competent laboratory in The Gambia with the capacity and capability to offer COVID-19 laboratory diagnostic services. In addition to providing laboratory diagnostic services for the MRCG clinical service department, the Ministry of Health of The Gambia through the National Public Health laboratories relied exclusively on our services to support the Ministry's COVID-19 outbreak response. A major bottleneck in meeting the need for increased testing required to contain the outbreak and support COVID-19 research is the manual steps in the procedure for conducting the gold standard RT-PCR test. This meant that the laboratories had to mobilise and train up to 80 scientific officers to process the samples received throughout the country to meet the turnaround time of less than 24 hours which was critical for in-patient management. This uninterrupted laboratory service was critical to the Clinical Services to effectively manage its patients and provide testing services for Unit travel. The manual handling and manipulation of such highly infectious samples increased the risk of laboratorian exposure and contamination. The laboratories faced serious challenges to offer an interrupted daily service with a turnaround time of under 24 hours as members of the laboratory team begin to be affected by COVID-19. The equipment will be used for supporting COVID-19 laboratory diagnostics in response to the outbreak but in addition, it will contribute significantly to Global Health Research by enhancing our capacity for other emerging highly infectious diseases. It will also add value to our laboratory methods to support better research in understanding the dynamics of infection, transmission, and immunity and support our West African strategic partners in both training and capacity building. It will be used by the Molecular diagnostic laboratories to support the clinical service department and also all other research projects in MRCG Unit.Institutional environment and support The equipment will be housed in the available structure in the Molecular Diagnostic laboratory. The Biomedical Engineering department at the MRCG Unit will provide routine equipment maintenance and will be included in their equipment maintenance plan. At the moment, similar equipment is being used for handling daily sample processing of COVID-19 diagnostic and research project samples. In addition, MRCG Biomedical Engineering staff are already trained on similar equipment and have a serviceable knowledge of this type of equipment, and receive good service support from the manufacturer.Contributions from host institutions, external project partner(s) or fundersThe equipment will be maintained by the Unit's Biomedical Engineering department. Research projects will contribute towards offsetting the cost of maintenance.