To improve the diagnosis and surveillance of infectious diseases in Nigeria, the Nigeria Center for Disease Control and Prevention and the Ekiti State Government established the nation’s first Zonal Reference Laboratory in Ado Ekiti, Ekiti State.
The Nigeria COVID-19 Preparedness and Response Project received money for the project from the Pandemic Emergency Financing facility of the World Bank.
According to reports, the Nigerian Center for Disease Control (NCDC) is required by law to establish a nationwide network of highly specialized reference laboratories to support national health security. This network will also be in line with Nigeria’s obligations under international health regulations and recommendations from the country’s 2017 Joint External Evaluation.
The deployment of the NCDC’s tiered laboratory network is designed to create an efficient network of testing laboratories for diseases of public health relevance, according to a news release issued on Wednesday and signed by Dr. Ifedayo Adetifa, Director-General of the NCDC.
Parts of the statement read, “The ZRLs will bring services closer to states, facilitate sample transportation, reduce turnaround time for testing and release of results, and contribute to resilience in our emergency and preparedness efforts at the subnational level.
“This newly commissioned Ekiti ZRL will strengthen diagnosis and surveillance of infectious diseases in Nigeria, with a particular focus on the six states within the South-west region: Ekiti, Ondo, Oyo, Osun, Lagos, and Ogun and the whole of southern Nigeria at large.
“The laboratory is equipped to diagnose priority diseases as part of our Integrated Disease Surveillance and Response system. The laboratory will be the primary hub for the timely and accurate diagnosis of epidemic and epidemic-prone diseases constituting public health threats in the South-west.
“As part of taking forward lessons learnt from the global COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on Nigeria, the NCDC has successfully designated and commenced the establishment of Zonal Reference Laboratories across the six geopolitical zones which are at various stages of completion.”
The NCDC stated that the ZRLs would support the implementation of quality management systems, including national and international accreditation of laboratories in NCDC’s network, and contribute to outbreak preparedness and response. They would also provide a wider geographic diagnostic coverage for epidemic and epidemic-prone diseases.
“This ZRL project is one of the efforts by the Federal Government of Nigeria and the Federal Ministry of Health through the NCDC to consolidate COVID-19 investments and further enhance our outbreak preparedness and response effort as we continue to respond to infectious diseases of public health importance,” it added.
