HealthScapades Episode #6 | Ekiti Molecular Laboratory: Let’s Wake Up The Sleeping Giant | 11.06.2024
by Tayo Fasuan
One of the redirected activities by the Ekiti State Honourable Commissioner for Health and Human Services, Dr. Oyebanji Filani, under the COVID-19 Preparedness and Response Project (CoPREP), is the resuscitation of the Ekiti State Molecular Laboratory, which was originally managed by 54gene between 2020 and 2022.
The molecular laboratory was my home at the heart of the pandemic when I was working at 54gene, carrying out a lot of testing for COVID-19, before I resigned due to ill-health because of the nature of the job. However, I have been following up on the laboratory ever since I left because of its importance in the public health space of Ekiti State.
I wrote here in 2022, during the opening of the NCDC Zonal Reference Laboratory, about how the Ekiti Molecular Laboratory has been seemingly abandoned. But in a move orchestrated by the Honourable Commissioner himself, the laboratory is getting a new lease of life.
The State Epidemiologist, who has also been at the forefront of resurrecting the activities of the laboratory even before the commencement of CoPREP, reached out to me to facilitate and train a new crop of laboratory scientists, to carry out molecular diagnostics of infectious diseases, which include Lassa, monkeypox and others.
Despite the fact that I’ve been avoiding molecular laboratories for a while, I settled right into the environment once more and entrenched myself in the implanting molecular science methodology in the minds of the trainees, who were picked out across all the arms of the Ministry of Health and Human Services in the state.
I went back in time into full lecture mode the first day, talking about the theoretical aspect of molecular science laboratory practices, especially PCR and the recent use of RT-qPCR, which we intend to use for our testing henceforth, before introducing the trainees to hands-on DNA and RNA extraction methods and standard operating procedures (SOPs) and the use of equipment in a standard molecular laboratory.
This week, after the holidays, the training continues with my colleague from Lassa Laboratory in Owo FMC, Bosede Ayeni-Ibitokun, taking the trainees on the quantitative PCR techniques and analysis of the results. But like I told the trainees, training never stops in continuous molecular laboratory work. The more you do, the better you get. That’s the style.
I believe this resuscitation of the molecular laboratory is a big plus for the public health sector in Ekiti State, and I hope these efforts are sustained for a very long time. And who knows? I may get drawn back to a world I briefly left behind.