Geneith Pharm Partners With Fyodor Biotechnologies To Launch First Ever Non-Blood Malaria Test Kit In Nigeria

Posted on December 3, 2015 by Top Celebrities

In a move characteristic of the company’s clearly innovative approach to solving endemic health problems in Nigeria, Geneith Pharmaceuticals Limited, will soon Flood the Nigerian market with special test kits that will detect malaria from a tiny quantity of urine. With this new kit, Just like women do with pregnancy test kits, Nigerians will soon be able to tell whether they have malaria by sticking a test strip in a tiny capful of urine. After twenty minutes, two indicating lines on the strip will show the patient that he has malaria, while one line means that the patient is not suffering from malaria.

It will be recalled that Geneith Pharm in 2012, introduced the Camosunate ACT anti-malarial drug into the Nigerian market, which resulted in the total transformation of the malarial treatment system in the country, winning the brand an award as the Best Malaria Management Drug in the Africa Products Awards of 2012, from the Institute for Government Research and Leadership Technology.

Speaking on the launch of the new test kits on Wednesday Nov 11th 2015 at National Trauma centre auditorium National hospital Abuja, the Chief Executive officer of Geneith Pharmaceuticals Mr. Emmanuel Umenwa, said that it took seven years of hard research by a Nigerian born scientist based in America; Dr. Eddy Agbo, to come out with the innovation. He said that the essence of the test is not to encourage self-medication, but rather to help Nigerians and indeed, people all over the world, to detect and diagnose malaria accurately, early and from the comfort of their homes, and thus reduce blind treatment, where by people take anti-malarial drugs at any kind of fever. According to Umenwa: “every fever is not caused by malaria, So when individuals find out with the help of the test, that that the fever they are experiencing is eventually not malaria, they can then seek proper medical attention” According to him, this will considerably reduce the harmful effects of self-medication whereby individuals keep on treating malaria when the actual cause of their fever is not malaria, thus resulting in various degrees of fatality.

The inventor of the Urine Malaria Test kit, Dr. Agbo is the Chief Executive Officer of Fyodor Biotechnologies, and a Research Fellow at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, United States. He worked on diagnostic and therapeutic biomarker discovery.He has over 15 years of biomedical research and direct product development experience in university and industry settings. Agbo founded Fyodor Biotechnologies in 2008, and his company won a minority-owned business achievement award from the Greater Baltimore Committee last fall. He is working on other patents such as a genotyping and diagnostic biomarker patents as well as another urine test kit that will detect both malaria and typhoid, in a simgle test.

The greatest advantage of this product, and the reason why Geneith Pharmaceuticals Limited has taken the gauntlet of ensuring its availability very soon in every Nigerian home, is that the UMT does not require blood, it is one step and not complicated to do, and result are gotten quickly, and accurately.It is going to be affordable and much less expensive than the current test that is done in the pharmacies or hospitals, so doctors are able to deliver the UMT to patients less costly than the current blood test.Every of the test pack has a product code, so one can scratch off the code and text the code to the number 1393, and you get a message back weather it is valid or not.

To validate the product with regulating agencies, Fyodor Biotechnologies partnered with College of Medicine, University of Lagos, FMoH, Nigeria, National Malaria Elimination Program and World Health Organization (WHO), NPO Southwest, Nigeria to enroll over 2,000 participants for pivotal clinical trials in Ikorodu, Lagos. Validation was started in Nigeria in August 2013 and rounded up in March 2014. The UMT is approved by the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), and has been endorsed by the FMoH, Nigeria. Fyodor Technologies then partnered with Geneith Pharmaceuticals, to introduce the product to the Nigerian market.

Cross Section Of Geneith And Fydor Top Management Staff At The Event