Antananarivo– A recent pronounce of the art laboratory has bolstered Madagascar’s efforts to explore and detect polioviruses and successfully reply to the threat of the illness and offer protection to younger of us from its devastating impacts.
The laboratory, which is fully well-liked by World Health Organization (WHO), used to be handed over at present to the nationwide authorities. Hosted on the Institut Pasteur de Madagascar in the capital, Antananarivo, the laboratory reinforces the nation’s residence as a regional pillar in snappy poliovirus detection and outbreak response.
“This commissioning symbolizes our collective dedication. It brings us nearer to a future the place no youngster in Madagascar—or wherever—is in ache of polio,” said Dr Nely Alphonse José, head of plague, emerging and overlooked tropical illness regulate department on the Ministry of Public Health.
Established in 2023, the laboratory has vastly enhanced Madagascar’s skill to by surprise detect poliovirus thru each and each acute flaccid paralysis and environmental surveillance. Between 2022 and 2024, the laboratory detected better than 40 circumstances of circulating variant poliovirus form 1, enabling instant and focused immunization responses. The efforts conducted a key feature in halting a virus of circulating variant poliovirus form 1. In Might perchance perhaps 2025, Madagascar marked two chubby years with none recent detections of the virus, which supposed the outbreak used to be declared closed after a radical evaluation.
“This laboratory is no longer easiest a nationwide asset—it’s a regional resource,” said Dr Laurent Musango, WHO Representative in Madagascar. “With reinforced skill and reducing-edge know-how, Madagascar is now even better positioned to e-book the fee against poliovirus transmission in Eastern and Southern Africa.”
The handing over of the laboratory to the authorities marks a most critical step in direction of sustainable, nation-led polio surveillance and self-sufficiency in managing future outbreaks and ensures solid measures are in residence to lift the nation’s polio-free residence and make a contribution to the global purpose of ending polio as soon as and for all.
As a result of continuing collaboration between nationwide nicely being authorities, WHO, and with strengthen from the Gates Foundation, the laboratory has additionally joined pilot tasks to deploy innovative instruments such as notify detection thru Nanopore sequencing – a recent know-how that enhances the tempo and accuracy of viral identification, taking away outdated delays when samples needed to be shipped in a foreign nation for genomic sequencing.
WHO and its partners equipped technical strengthen, coaching, IT upgrades and environmental website online optimization to enhance the laboratory’s operations—reinforcing nationwide efforts to satisfy the targets of the International Polio Eradication Initiative.
Permitted for viral isolation, intratypic differentiation and environmental surveillance, the laboratory is now a cornerstone in Madagascar’s built-in illness surveillance machine. It ensures timely files to e-book vaccination campaigns and outbreak responses all the design thru the nation.
