As the rest of the world forges ahead in Gene Sequencing Medical Technology, Guyana remains behind but not for much longer. The Ministry of Health is expected to conduct its first gene sequencing test at the end of the week.
This historic move was announced by Minister of Health, Dr. Frank Anthony, during the opening session of the Molecular Surveillance of Malaria five-day workshop hosted by the Harvard T. H Chan School of Public Health and sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Minister Anthony pointed out that over the years, Guyana has been on the back foot when it comes to a technology that has made many breakthroughs and solved many problems the world faces in the field of medical illness.
He maintains that Guyana can no longer stay behind. That situation would be corrected by the end of the week.
“As you heard by the end of this week we intend to make some history here and that is to be able to do the first set of sequencing right here in Guyana and I think that would be a big accomplishment.”
Gene Sequencing Technology for years has been making several breakthroughs in terms relay understanding how the disease or virus remains to function.
For example, with the COVID-19 pandemic on hand, the scientist was able to track the movement of the virus, its reaction to treatment, etc which essentially made way in countries formulating their reaction on how to deal with the virus.
This type of technology also saw the detection of the new variants of the virus, and at the cost of not having such technology, Guyana until today cannot test for the different variants. As such Guyana has to revert to the outside source, a task takes a lot of time and money.
On the other hand, when it comes to dealing with Malaria, Guyana continues to struggle in the area of medication resistance in which the virus continues to evolve and resist older medication, leaving patients vulnerable to becoming several sick and even dying.
Withstanding the need for such information and capacity to guild programs tailored to tackle the issue, Dr. Anthony said that that capacity is now being formed.
“This project as you would have heard, and that capacity, really, is to move us from where we are right now in terms of testing to be able to use these newer technologies to do sequencing and to a deeper understanding of both the parasite and technology,” Dr. Anthony noted.
Over the next five days, participants from various departments of the Ministry of Health, especially the Vector control department, will be focusing in on how to get the information and tackle the area and should be reached to eliminate the Malaria Illness.
“We are going to have in this workshop, where we kind of separated it into a lad aspect and an epidemiology and data aspect and to build on these two foundations can help not only Malaria programme but also other vector-borne diseases, including COVID-19.
“So, I think it’s good for us as we start to move into a direction, where we can incorporate research into operational activities,” Professor Caroline Buckee, who stands as one of the facilitators in Workshop.
With participants set to have five full days of capacity building through knowledge sharing as Guyana seeks to tackle the Malaria Disease which infects thousands of Guyanese yearly.
