Saturday, 25 December 2021 – In its continuous technical and operational support to the Islamic Republic of Iran in responding to the COVID-19 crisis, the World Health Organization has just donated 2 million nucleic acid extraction tests to the Ministry of Health and Medical Education of Iran through financial support from the Federal Republic of Germany.
The 60-ton shipment of 261 packages, procured through the German Federal Foreign Office (GFFO), landed at Tehran’s Imam Khomeini International Airport early on Friday, 24 December, and will be distributed to public medical laboratories across the country.
The delivered nucleic acid extraction kits can deliver up to 2 million laboratory reactions and are used in diagnostic devices called ‘automated extraction machines’ to extract genomic nucleic acid DNA and RNA of bacteria, viruses and parasites for PCR-based detection from a wide range of samples.
Extraction kits used in automated devices have higher accuracy and speed in sample analysis and deliver higher quality final results when compared with manual kits, and therefore, the donated kits will play an important role in enhancing diagnostic capacity in the country.
The procurement comes at the request of the Ministry of Health and Medical Education to support national medical diagnostic capacity in response to the viral pandemic. The kits will be used as consumables for the automated extraction devices that were supplied by WHO earlier this year within the framework of the Iran COVID-19 Emergency Response Project, a collaboration between WHO and the Ministry of Health and Medical Education beginning in June 2020 and ending in July 2021 in an effort to support the country’s health care system in diagnosing and treating patients with COVID-19.
