As the world struggles to address the COVID-19 crisis, attention increasingly turns to laboratories and the crucial role that they play in diagnostics and research. A rising number of reports from multiple countries detail these problems: lack of laboratories, reagents, technicians, and equipment form bottlenecks in both diagnosis and the race for a viable vaccine.
As COVID-19 cases start to …
Through my work in African laboratories I am regularly made aware of the challenging equipment shortages faced by research laboratories in many low/middle-income countries (LMICs). This extends far beyond the absence of “state-of-the-art” equipment and shiny, new models regularly produced by commercial companies. These shortages include the availability of what would normally be considered ubiquitous laboratory equipment – PCR machines, …