Nigerian health-tech startup 54gene recently launched a COVID-19 support fund in a bid to purchase test kits to increase Nigeria’s daily testing capacity. The fund is currently valued at $500,000.
As at 09:10 pm 12th April there are 323 confirmed cases of #COVID19 reported in Nigeria. 85 have been discharged with 10 deaths. Three of Nigeria’s major cities — Lagos, Ogun, and Abuja are currently on a two-week lockdown as mandated by the President with the hope to contain the spread of the virus.
Testing potentially exposed people to fulfill the first prong in the WHO test, treat, trace framework may not yield desired results in Nigeria as the NCDC can only carry out 200 tests a day due to lack of testing kits and skilled manpower to handle these kits. According to the CEO, Dr. Abasi Ene-Obong 54gene would step in to ameliorate the situation and ramp up testing efforts from about 200 tests a day to 1000 tests a day and increase capacity up to 5000 tests.
It is important to know that the Nigerian genomics research company 54gene does not manufacture test kits but they have identified corona virus testing as first steps to containing the pandemic, hence their investments in the COVID-19 fund.
The company opened the fund with a $150,000 donation, and additional $350,000 from Union Bank, Nigeria, that will be used to purchase test kits and provide adequate training for health workers in the front-lines who would be using the kits and analysing the samples they collect.
54gene plans to do this by providing the necessary medical resources and funding the training of additional healthcare workers to conduct tests and analyze the samples they collect.
The CEO also mentioned in his interview with CNBC that 54gene is planning to purchase PPEs (Personal Protective Equipment required by these health workers for their safety. He said they have already purchased 4,000 N-95 protective masks for health workers.
Y Combinator-backed 54gene was founded in 2019 by Dr. Abasi Ene-Obong, a resident of San Francisco, who has a Ph.D. in Cancer Biology from the University of London.
They saw a lack of diversity in pharmaceutical research and set out to build the world’s first Pan-African bio bank. This bio bank will be used to improve healthcare across the continent. Genetic data from Africa is limited. 54gene aims to detect and identify DNA markers that have been ignored by researchers.
If you are looking to contribute to the Nigeria COVID-19 Testing Fund. kindly contact Nigeriacovid19fund@54gene.com.
Read more: