Burundi has launched operations at a specialist infectious disease research laboratory fully outfitted with Russian equipment, Moscow’s ambassador to Burundi, Valery Mikhailov, told TASS on Wednesday.
Specialists in Burundi now have the opportunity to recognize and identify infectious diseases, even those that are “highly dangerous,” Mikhailov added.
According to the envoy, Moscow has supplied laboratory reagents that can be used to treat various forms of hemorrhagic fever, leptospirosis, and other dangerous infectious diseases.
“In February, a fully equipped research laboratory supplied by Russia was opened at the National Institute of Public Health,” the diplomat said. He noted that the agreement to supply and stock the lab had been reached during the Russia-Africa Summit last summer, when bilateral deals deals were signed on energy, healthcare, education, labor, and justice.
In August, the World Health Organization released a report stating that Burundi has a “high burden of communicable and non-communicable disease… with the latter making up 37% of deaths in 2019.” Although it made strides in improving child survival rates from 2015 to 2021, it has not achieved the Sustainable Development Goal targets.
In November last year, a team of virologists and military personnel from the Russian Nuclear, Chemical, and Biological Protection Troops arrived in Burkina Faso to set up a mobile laboratory for dengue fever screening. Moscow dispatched specialists after the military government of the West African country stated that since January of last year, more than 200 people died as a result of the mosquito-borne epidemic, mainly in the capital, Ouagadougou and Bobo-Dioulasso.