Project Title: The Emergency Response to COVID-19 Pandemic in Tanzania
Project Description: The Ministry of Health of the Government of Tanzania and the Ministry of Health of the Revolutionary Government of Zanzibar have both issued COVID-19 initial preparedness and 72 hours response plans amounting each to approximately US$ 8 million. Donor coordination is assured by National Task Force chaired by the Prime Minister. There are four technical areas of engagement for partners to contribute that are case management, laboratory and surveillance, risk communication, and community engagement and... The Ministry of Health of the Government of Tanzania and the Ministry of Health of the Revolutionary Government of Zanzibar have both issued COVID-19 initial preparedness and 72 hours response plans amounting each to approximately US$ 8 million. Donor coordination is assured by National Task Force chaired by the Prime Minister. There are four technical areas of engagement for partners to contribute that are case management, laboratory and surveillance, risk communication, and community engagement and logistics. In order to expedite an immediate response to address the existing gaps in all four areas, the Embassy pf Switzerland identified current project partners who have the immediate capacity to support the efforts of the two governments. The Ifakara Health Institute has strong technical expertise and operational capacity to scale-up the national diagnostic capacity two to three-fold by making available its laboratories to the National Laboratory. The IHI Bagamoyo Branch laboratory is certified by National Laboratory as a COVID19 testing site. Jointly with the Foundation Botnar based in Basel, the Embassy of Switzerland and Botnar will make available an additional 950,000 US$ to IHI for it to urgently purchase additional RT-PCR equipment and reagents. This will allow the decentralization of testing to ten additional testing locations, including one location in Zanzibar. The National Health Laboratory Quality Assurance and Training Centre (NHQATC) located at NIMR HQs in Dar es Salaam will manage this scale-up of testing locations. The NHQATC has identified 8 laboratories located at NIMR Amani (Tanga), Mbeya, Muhimbili centers, Dodoma, KCMC Moshi and IHI Bagamoyo where molecular technology exists, and the use of RT-PCR is regularly performed for scientific studies. The identified labs will provide additional technical expertise to operate on behalf of the National Laboratory the decentralized COVID19 testing. In Zanzibar, IHI technical staff will establish the islands first testing center at Biosafety 2+ lever in collaboration with the United States CDC. Thus, IHI will procure the required equipment through the international supply channel with guidance from the Director of the National Laboratories. This procurement will increase within a few weeks of testing capability by 10,000 tests. The Monitoring or the Procurement process will be through the IHI Finance-Audit-Risk Committee (FARC), and the procurement is expected to be completed in a maximum of 12 weeks.
Principal Investigator : Ally Olotu
Department Name : BRCT
Time frame: (2020-04-17) - (2020-06-30)
Swiss Federal Department of Foreign (FDFA) (Normal)
External Collaborating Partners
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