Rwanda Standards Boards (RSB) has acquired a medical and pharmaceutical testing laboratory to protect public health through assuring the quality, efficacy and safety of medicinal and related products.

The laboratory, which is already in operation, will analyse medicines for public and private sector to ascertain the level of quality and efficacy of imported or locally produced medicine.

The facility will analyse samples for registration and inspection purpose in order to carry out and organise proficiency tests with World Health Organisation and other regional quality bodies, according to officials.

Raymond Murenzi, the RSB director-general, said the laboratory will protect the public against a number of serious health hazards and save money spent on buying the standard-centered services from international testing laboratories.

"The laboratory was established to boost the trust of patients in healthcare and medicines that are locally bought. It will also help us save money paid by government whenever we took our products for testing abroad,” he said.

It is now four years since the laboratory was conceptualised and it was estabalished with partnership from the Ministry of Health.

It has the capacity to test over 30 types of pharmaceuticals and has currently established testing capabilities of parameters in malaria, antiretroviral, anti-tuberculosis and antibiotics, diabetes, hyper-tension.

Murenzi said the laboratory will also help curb the proliferation counterfeit pharmaceutical products and clear all queries raised by foreign investors, especially pharmaceutical firms that have committed to establish production plants in Rwanda.

Two pharmaceutical firms; one from the US and the other from Morocco have recently announced they would set up production plants in the country.

"There is hope that foreign investors can now establish factories since there is a way to regulate people who get involved in the counterfeiting of manufactured pharmaceuticals,” Murenzi, said adding that the pharmaceuticals that do not match the laboratory’s norms will face severe sanctions.

The laboratory, which cost 4 billion to establish will test the active ingredients and purity in pharmaceuticals, identification of products to check if the identified products match the medicine label on the package and will provide data and advice on the quality of medicines to policy makers involved in medicines safety issues.

Antoine Mukunzi, the division manager of National Quality Testing Laboratory at RSB, said the lab matches the international standards, level of standards and is confident the country will benefit from their services.

He said that besides being costly, they wasted valuable time between sending samples to foreign laboratories and receiving results which delayed provision of health services.

The laboratory will also soon start testing services of microbial limits tests, sterility testing, microbial contaminant identification preservatives testing and microbial challenges, bacterial endotoxin and studies of extractable and leachable.

The laboratory has five rooms in which the testing process is conducted till the medicine is ready for consumption.

It is a modern laboratory has already been listed among the standard-centered reference laboratories at the level of the East African Community.

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