UPCYCLING TO BUILD NEW LABS 

Jumping on the Bandwagon

In 2011, Sokoine University of Agriculture School of Veterinary Medicine welcomed a new laboratory structure to their campus—made of upcycled shipping containers. The building comprises of two 20’ long rectangular steel containers stacked on top of each other. It became the first lab of its kind to be used as a center for wildlife health and diagnostics. HALI lab is home to a number of projects, including USAID's PREDICT project, and a One Health project funded by the US National Institutes of Health.  Lab technicians are currently working on a number of diagnostic activities from molecular detection of tuberculosis to screening of rodent and bat specimens for arenaviruses.

Building Labs & Capacity in Tanzania

The Emerging Infectious Disease Molecular Laboratory at Sokoine University of Agriculture is the first advanced molecular disease diagnostic laboratory for detecting known and novel viruses in wildlife in Tanzania. PREDICT established cost-effective methods to detect known zoonotic and novel viruses.

Brett Smith, Lab Manager for the UC Davis One Health Institute Laboratory, has worked extensively with the PREDICT/Tanzania team as a mentor to transfer technology and knowledge of PREDICT’s novel diagnostic approach, using broadly reactive consensus-based (genus/family level) PCR to detect a wide variety of viruses from each animal sample. When the new lab was first built, Brett traveled to Tanzania to help install equipment and supervise training of lab technicians Ruth and Kitime. He got them started on RNA and DNA extractions, making complementary DNA (cDNA - DNA synthesized from a messenger RNA). Eventually, PREDICT was able to completely transfer diagnostic responsibilities for screening rodent and bat specimens for arenaviruses to the PREDICT/Tanzania SUA team.