COVID-19: A unique opportunity to improve laboratory capacity for neglected tropical diseases in sub-Saharan Africa

Summary

In this article the authors argue that the global neglected tropical diseases (NTD) community should be doing more to leverage the public health and university laboratories that were very involved in COVID-19 testing early in the pandemic, as these laboratories now run the risk of being underutilised as COVID-19 testing wanes.

The authors make a case for repurposing many of these laboratories to support control programmes for NTDs in endemic countries as they contemplate how to strengthen laboratory capacity for all endemic and emerging epidemiological diseases.