At the end of August, a new COVID-19 testing laboratory was established in Makeni City in rural Sierra Leone with the support of WHO.
This is significant progress in the country’s efforts to become self-reliant and not depend on external expertise like it did during the Ebola outbreak.
Currently the laboratory testing capacity in Sierra Leone is between 400 to 500 tests per day. This is set to change as WHO and other partners are supporting the Ministry of Health and Sanitation to scale up testing to a minimum 1 000 tests daily.
WHO is supporting the scaling up of laboratory testing for COVID-19 through: addressing inadequate human resource quantity and capacity and provision of materials required for testing in partnership with GIZ. WHO facilitated the training and mentorship of 30 laboratory scientists.
In addition, WHO recruited two international consultants to support local capacity building for COVID-19 testing as well as testing for other diseases of public health interest such as measles, cholera, yellow fever, Ebola, and others.
Establishment of the new testing facility will reduce the time spent in transporting samples to far away laboratories and reduce the turn-around-time for test results.
WHO continues to provide vital strategic support in Sierra Leone in collaboration with other partners including US-CDC, GIZ, PIH and other to contain the COVID-19 pandemic.