The Ministry of Health has established a National Influenza Centre (NIC), a public health laboratory facility for training on influenza surveillance in Kenya and beyond.
Head of Directorate of Health Standards, Quality Assurance and Regulations Dr Pacifica Onyancha said the laboratory will offer quality and affordable reference diagnostic testing and surveillance monitoring services to the public and private institutions and will continually upgrade all tests to reflect technological change in laboratory medicine.
“NIC will be receiving specimens from county, local and national health institutions and agencies for analysis and they will be providing information summaries that are crucial in the assessment of public health trends and epidemic dynamics on a national scale,” said Onyancha.
She said the laboratory will serve as the key point of contact between world health organisation and Kenya in all questions relating to virological and epidemiological surveillance of influenza and provision of influenza viruses isolates to the WHO Global Influenza surveillance Network.
Influenza occurs in distinct outbreaks of varying extent every year. This epidemiologic pattern reflects the changing nature of the antigen properties of influenza viruses and their subsequent spread depends upon multiple factors, including admissibility of the virus and the susceptibility of the population.
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