News Rendezvous

On the 8th of February 2023, the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (NCDC)
and the Ekiti State Government, with funding from the World Bank’s Pandemic Emergency
Financing facility through the Nigeria COVID-19 Preparedness and Response Project
commissioned NCDC’s first Zonal Reference Laboratory (ZRL) in the country in Ado Ekiti,
Ekiti State.
The NCDC is mandated by law to develop a network of highly specialised reference
laboratories11 across the nation to contribute to national health security. This is aligned with
Nigeria’s obligations under International Health Regulations (IHR 2005) and
recommendations from Nigeria’s 2017 Joint External Evaluation (JEE). The NCDC’s
implementation of its tiered laboratory network is intended to establish an effective network of
testing laboratories for diseases of public health importance. The ZRLs will bring services
closer to States, facilitate sample transportation, reduce turnaround time for testing and release
of results, and contribute to resilience in our emergency and preparedness efforts at the
subnational level.
This newly commissioned Ekiti ZRL will strengthen diagnosis and surveillance of infectious
diseases in Nigeria, with a particular focus on the six states within the South-west region: Ekiti,
Ondo, Oyo, Osun, Lagos, and Ogun and the whole of southern Nigeria at large. The laboratory
is equipped to diagnose priority diseases as part of our Integrated Disease Surveillance and
Response (IDSR) system. The laboratory will be the primary hub for the timely and accurate
diagnosis of epidemic and epidemic-prone diseases constituting public health threats in the
South-west.
As part of taking forward lessons learnt from the global COVID-19 pandemic and its impact
on Nigeria, the NCDC has successfully designated and commenced the establishment of Zonal
Reference Laboratories (ZRLs) across the 6 geopolitical zones which are at various stages of
completion. These ZRLs will contribute to outbreak preparedness and response, provide a
wider geographic diagnostic coverage for epidemic and epidemic-prone diseases, and support the implementation of quality management systems including national and international
[2/10, 3:05 PM] Billygraham Abel: accreditation of laboratories in NCDC’s network. This ZRL project is one of the efforts by the
Federal Government of Nigeria and the Federal Ministry of Health through the NCDC to consolidate COVID-19 investments and further enhance our outbreak preparedness and response effort as we continue to respond to infectious diseases of public health importance.

About the Nigeria CoPREP
On August 6, 2020, the Board of Executive Directors of the World Bank approved a grant in
the amount of US$ 14.28 million from the Pandemic Emergency Financing (PEF) facility to
the Federal Republic of Nigeria, in addition to the credit for the Nigeria COVID-19
Preparedness and Response Project (Nigeria CoPREP). A part of the Multiphase Programmatic
Approach (MPA), supported under the Fast-Track COVID-19 Facility (FTCF), the Nigeria
CoPREP Project Development Objective (PDO) is “to prevent, detect, and respond to the threat
posed by COVID-19 at state level in Nigeria”. The PEF facility supports three core areas:
procurement of equipment for the National Reference Laboratory and six regional laboratories
to increase diagnostic capacity; procurement of equipment for 12 purpose-built infectious
disease treatment centres to improve case management capabilities of COVID-19 and other
infectious diseases in 12 States; and procurement of vehicles for disease surveillance and
response activities.