Uganda on Wednesday launched a rapid COVID-19 antibody test partly funded by France that developers hope to market in sub-Saharan Africa, where the laboratory infrastructure needed for extensive novel coronavirus testing is thin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The test, which requires a finger prick to draw blood, was developed by a team at Makerere, Uganda\u2019s oldest public university, with partial funding from the French embassy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The east African country has long experience of infectious diseases like HIV and Ebola which it has drawn on to develop diagnostics expertise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThis is a point-of-care test that can be used within equatorial Africa village settings, remote areas where there\u2019s no laboratory, there\u2019s no electricity, there\u2019s no expert,\u201d said Misaki Wayengera, a researcher at Makerere\u2019s Department of Pathology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve had a history of developing rapid tests for infectious diseases…So when COVID came we were like, \u2018OK, we have the skills, why don\u2019t we do this\u2019,\u201d Wayengera, who also helped to invent a rapid test for Ebola.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The kits work by detecting two antibodies, immunoglobulin M (IgM) and immunoglobulin G (IgG), triggered when someone is infected with coronavirus, Wayengera told Reuters before the launch at Mulago, Uganda\u2019s national referral hospital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Makerere partnered with local firm Astel Diagnostics Uganda, a World Health Organisation-certified manufacturer, to make an initial batch of 2,400 tests. Wayengera said they are in talks with bigger investors about larger commercial production.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The kit, which has been approved by Uganda\u2019s state-run National Drugs Authority, has an accuracy rate of 70%, he said, but researchers hope eventually to raise that to 90%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Although rapid testing is seen as key to combating COVID-19, poor countries like Uganda have struggled to find a cheap and easily available point-of-care diagnostic tool for mass testing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The COVID-19 outbreak in Uganda has been kept relatively mild, with only about 40,600 cases in total and 334 deaths.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Uganda on Wednesday launched a rapid COVID-19 antibody test partly funded by France that developers hope to market in sub-Saharan Africa, where the laboratory infrastructure needed for extensive novel coronavirus testing is thin. The test, which requires a finger prick to draw blood, was developed by a team at Makerere, Uganda\u2019s oldest public university, with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27983,"featured_media":22494,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_paywall_metabox":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[356,467,98],"tags":[31],"class_list":["post-22493","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-big-story","category-health","category-news","tag-featured"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ugmirror.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22493","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ugmirror.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ugmirror.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ugmirror.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27983"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ugmirror.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22493"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ugmirror.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22493\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22498,"href":"https:\/\/ugmirror.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22493\/revisions\/22498"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ugmirror.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22494"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ugmirror.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ugmirror.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ugmirror.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}