The Ministry of Health hopes to improve laboratory services through the newly launched Nucleic Acid Testing Unit. The Ministry of Health through Rwanda Biomedical Centre’s National Reference Laboratory Division (NRL) launched a Nucleic Acid Testing laboratory Unit to enhance health service delivery.

“It is exciting. The new unit will help in toxology, pathogen identification tests for gene mutations, among other tests,” said Dr Patrick Ndimubanzi, the State Minister for Public and Primary Health Care

The new unit will improve testing capacity with an additional package to include various Molecular biology technics, it will involve tools molecular biology tools to diagnose various diseases of public health importance including viruses, bacteria, parasites and fungi.

“We have seen that it is essential to make sure that we cascade molecular biology diagnosis skills in the network,” said Dr Ivan Mwikarago, the Division Manager of the National Reference Laboratory (NRL) at Rwanda Biomedical Centre.

Key tests will include; detection of cancer markers, drug resistance markers, toxins from heavy metals from food and water sources among others.

The facility will contribute towards research and development of new ideas in the health sector to control disease mobility and mortality rate in Rwanda. Meanwhile the turn-around time of giving patient results will reduce since the technology is automatic with reliable results in real time.

The Ministry of Health through Rwanda Biomedical Centre calls upon all health practitioners, researchers, academia to utilize this infrastructure for better clinical decision making.

The NRL is responsible for supporting health services delivery in Rwanda through surveillance, prevention, diagnosis and disease management by ensuring quality laboratory services with factual results at all levels.

NRL achievements include; a state of art in Nucleic Acid Testing technology, a 5 star laboratory rated by WHO standards, establishing of 49 district labs into accreditation process within the laboratory network and NRL has applied for ISO15189 certification for international standards.