Over the last few months a small team at IHK has been investigating the requirements for a new TB Lab. This work has been led by Dr Mark Russell. Mark has been working for the last year as a VSO medical volunteer at the Reach Out Mbuya community HIV programme in Kampala (in real life a GP from Penzance).
TB is an extremely common infection and causes a huge toll particularly in the HIV positive population. Half of the HIV positive patients who die are dying from TB and 20% of HIV patients have TB at any time.
TB management is difficult – we are still reliant on a microscopic test for diagnosis that was invented in 1882 and drugs for its treatment that don’t work well and haven’t been improved since the 1950s. In this regard TB is a classic disease of poverty, affecting mainly the poor and ignored by the rich.
In the last 5 years a small group of people has been working to redress this situation. A modern and relatively cheap test for TB, MODS, has been invented in Peru and we are hoping to introduce this to East Africa by making it the central provision of a new TB diagnostic service run at IHK.
Establishing the Lab, equipping it and providing the initial training for Lab technicians will cost in excess of GBP15,000.
Suubi Trust is seeking funding and sponsorship to help make this happen.
If you would like to help then please get in touch…
