President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni Tuesday commissioned a diagnostic test kit manufacturing plant, the first of its kind in the Great Lakes region.

Situated in Ntinda, Nakawa Division, Kampala, the state of the art plant, Microhaem Scientifics (MHS) will support Uganda and the regional health sectors to develop local manufacturing capacity towards improving and sustaining the medical supply chain needs by producing high-quality and affordable malaria and HIV diagnostic testing kits in the country.

During the commissioning, President Museveni thanked the local scientists and the manufacturing plant proprietors for enhancing Uganda’s local manufacturing capacity in the health sector.

“I want to congratulate the Ugandan scientists for really waking up. The human race was not very scientific, it was only in 1865 when a man called Louis Pasteur found out that there are other organs which live around us, and we cannot see them with our naked eyes.

This was not long ago when Louis Pasteur was able to see bacteria which causes fermentation in milk or something else. Before, the whole world didn’t know that there were other organisms around us,” he said.

“It is really not good for people who say they are scientists to fail to understand and use this scientific knowledge to solve problems. For instance, how does quinine attack the malaria you are talking about, how does it do it? This is just biochemistry or molecular biology so how would the scientists not know this, and you say you are a scientist? In the army we were able to understand explosions by just using the properties of different compounds,” he added.

President Museveni further encouraged the local scientists to partner with their colleagues around the world so that they can develop the science sector in Uganda more.

He also assured the local scientists that the government will continue injecting more funds into their projects to ensure that they are a success.

The Minister of Health, Dr. Jane Ruth Aceng noted that for years, Uganda has been facing a challenge of unsustainable importation of the required diagnostics and medicines for diseases like Malaria, TB, Sleeping sickness, ebola, among others. 

“We are therefore very excited that we are now expanding the local manufacturing capacity to include laboratory reagents and other diagnostic devices. I congratulate Microhaem Group of Companies for leading in the local diagnostic manufacturing space,” the minister said.

Dr. Cedric Akwesigye, the Managing Director and proprietor of Microhaem Scientifics informed the President that the huge facility has been equipped with state-of-the-art technology to produce a range of both Molecular and Rapid Diagnostic Test (RDT) kits, HIV Viral load test kits, HIV Early Infant Diagnosis (EID) test kits, and HIV Drug Monitoring kits.

Microhaem Scientifics portfolio also includes HIV RDT kits, HIV Self-Test kits, Malaria RDT kits, and Hepatitis B kits.

Dr. Akwesigye also assured the President that the plant is ready for orders and to supply the products.

“The manufacturing plant has been constructed in accordance with the World Health Organization’s Standards, ISO 13485 and cGMP, and has been inspected and supported by the Uganda National Drug Authority (NDA),” he said.