Kenya Medical Research Institute has partnered with the World Health Organisation to train African countries about genomics infectious disease.
The training aims to increase the pool of genome sequencing and bioinformatics expertise among laboratory staff, scientists and programme heads to upscale scientific research.
The First Sars- Cov-2 sequencing and bioinformatics course started at the Kemri centre for geographic medicine at the Coast.
Trainings will be done in the different Kemri centres in Kenya including Kilifi, Nairobi and Kisumu.
Prof Elijah Sangok, Director of research capacity building and training at Kemri, said they have been at the forefront in the fight against Covid-19.
Speaking during the official opening of the training at Kilifi, Sangok said Kemri has been researching on Covid-19 variants.
"One of the expertise that we have supports the Ministry of Health and African countries in tracking the Covid variants," he said.
He said Covid-19 variants are changing rapidly from Delta to Omicron and now there is the Sarp Omicron.
Sangok said as the variants keep on changing they have an impact on transmissibility as others are transmitted faster than others.
"Its very important to track these variants because of the changing nature of the Covid-19," he said.
Dr Damaris Matoke, a Molecular Biologist at the Centre for Biotechnology Research and Development, said the training was important because they have been doing genomic surveillance for other infectious and non-communicable diseases.
Matoke is also the coordinator for the training overseeing execution in Kilifi, Nairobi and Kisumu Kemri centres.
She said currently the genomic surveillance focuses on the Covid-19 virus and wants to monitor how the virus has evolved over time and how to cause disease severity.
The coordinator said the training is a big milestone for Kenya.
"We are currently training Tanzania and Ethiopia and soon we are going to Eritea, Rwanda and Burundi this profiles Kenya highly," Matoke said.
Dan Mogaka WHO representative said genomic sequencing is important because diseases have no boundaries that is why they were building capacity for lab teams from different countries.
"These training will help people because once the samples are taken we will know how the diseases spreads and come up with preventive measures," he said.
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