NEW YORK – The Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics and the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention announced Friday a partnership to build COVID-19 rapid diagnostic testing capacity across the continent.
The two organizations signed a three-year memorandum of understanding to "drive access to essential diagnostics in Africa," FIND said in a statement. FIND has convened the Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator Diagnostics Pillar, which Africa CDC is a member of, to build technical capacity to allow countries to implement rapid testing without a delay. The pillar aims to supply 500 million tests in the next year to low- and middle-income countries.
"Access to diagnostics remain the weakest link in the clinical care cascade, especially at the primary healthcare level," FIND added. Rapid antigen tests can expand access to testing in a variety of settings in low- and middle-income countries, and many have been rolled out or are coming soon in the next few weeks, including tests from Quidel, Becton Dickinson, Abbott, and Roche.