Story by Abigirl Tembo, Health Editor
THE Government’s Analyst Laboratory in Harare has been furnished with the latest testing equipment which has resulted in a quick turnover of results.
The move is part of efforts to ensure safety in the public health system
Mandated with ensuring the safety of the public health system through testing food products, water and postmortems for suspicious deaths, the Government Analyst Laboratory in Harare has been incapacitated since 2004 when essential equipment malfunctioned.
The past two years have however witnessed a paradigm shift after the laboratory received modern equipment which is already in use.
“Our Success stories range from retention of human resources. As a department, we have a staff complement of 90% to 98%, unlike previous years when we lost our workers to competitors, and, we can attribute this to the incentives that are in place.
“We have various capital equipment that was bought and is used collectively by the laboratory’s different units so we continue to offer that analytical services to the public,” said Mr Livingston Musiyambiri, the Director at Government Analyst Laboratory.
The department which deals with toxicology analysis involving food poisoning post-mortems had a backlog of nearly 1 500 cases dating back to 2004.
However, the specialists have worked on 322 cases from 2012 to 2021 and this year they have received 126 cases, of which 110 results of the cases have already been analysed and released.
The laboratory which has adopted ISO 17025:2017 which is the primary international standard for establishing laboratory competence and quality is now targeting ISO certification.
