Veterinary Service Directorate readies two more labs for coronavirus testing

The Veterinary Service Directorate expects to avail two more labs for novel coronavirus testing in Ghana by next week.

The directorate’s Accra labs have been supporting the Noguchi Medical Research Institute in the processing and testing of samples for the virus since late March.

Now Dr. Fenteng Danso, the National Head of Epidemiology at the directorate, says his outfit is ready to scale up its support as the world battles the pandemic.

“We have similar facilities elsewhere in Takoradi and that of Pong-Tamale. Going forward, we plan to upscale the veterinary services contribution by very soon rolling out that of the Takoradi and Pong-Tamale to support the Ministry of Health in this our collective fight against COVID-19. Everything being okay, we expect that our facilities in the Western Region and the Northern Region will be testing for COVID-19.”

Veterinary labs are known to test for diseases using the same equipment as medical labs.

Globally, veterinary labs have stepped up to bolster the testing capacities in their various countries as the world tries to get ahead of the virus.

Many public health labs processing samples for testing have become overworked despite working 24/7.

In Ghana, Noguchi currently has a backlog of 6,000 samples at last count.

But this backlog would have been much bigger if the veterinary service directorate’s Biosafety level 3 lab hadn’t proven capable and stepped up to test some 3,000 samples in its labs which Global Affairs Canada provided in 2014.

The directorate currently has two PCR [Polymerase chain reaction] machines in Accra, one in Takoradi and one in Pong-Tamale, which are critical to the testing process.

As far as the expertise of the personnel is concerned, Dr. Danso noted that they are adept at handling other deadly diseases like rabies and anthrax.

“We had a project called PREDICT where we look specifically at coronavirus, influenzas virus in the wild and we used this facility.”

A critical element they needed to join the testing effort was “the extraction kit and the PCR reagent which was provided by Noguchi,” Dr. Theophilus Odoom, the head of the Accra veterinary laboratories said.

 

With the increased spotlight on scientists amid the pandemic, Dr. Odoom reminded of the need for more investment in research.

The Veterinary Services Directorate is capable of much more with the requisite resources, he said.

“It will be our wish that government can increase our capacity because there a lot of things we can do… if the government will support us to build a veterinary research institute which will comprise of various laboratories; pathology and other different sections of laboratories, then we will be very happy.”

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