Southeast, Northeast have lowest number of testing labs

From Moses Emorinken, Abuja

The Southeast and Northeast have the lowest number of molecular diagnostic testing laboratories for COVID-19 in the country, an investigation by The Nation has shown.

The two geo-political zones have  three  laboratories each as against  Southwest’s nine; Southsouth’s six;  Northwest’s  eight and Northcentral’s four.

States like Kogi in the Northcentral;  Cross River in Southsouth  and Abia in Southeast that have been in the news over their testing capacities  or number of cases, do not have a single testing laboratory.

On Tuesday, the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) announced the activation of three additional laboratories in Oyo, Akwa Ibom and Jigawa states.

Read Also: Nigeria’s 200,000 testing capacity underutilised, says NCDC

The activation of laboratories in states like Kwara, Gombe, Ekiti, Ondo, and Abia is in progress, a development that would bring the total number of laboratories with capacity to test for COVID-19 in the country  to 33.

The Director-General of the NCDC, Dr. Chikwe Ihekweazu, has continued to lament that the agency’s network of laboratories across the country have a combined testing capacity of only 200,000.

Giving account of progress made in the last 100 days of the COVID-19 outbreak in the country,   the NCDC said in a statement on June 6  that  prior to the confirmation of the first case, it “supported four laboratories within its molecular laboratory network to activate testing for COVID-19.”

It explained that its “goal was  to expand to at least 10 more laboratories by the end of June, leveraging on Gene-Xpert capacity for Tuberculosis diagnosis.”