The Department of Science and Technology (DOST) vowed Friday, Nov. 5, to make diagnostic kits for both communicable and non-communicable diseases affordable and accessible to many Filipinos.

DOST-Philippine Council for Health Research and Development (PCHRD) Executive Director Jaime C. Montoya assured the public that the development of local diagnostic test kits continues to make these kits more affordable and accessible to Filipinos.

“The reason why we’re actually developing diagnostic tests and capacitating our local manufacturers to do it is for us to make available affordable, cheap, and accurate diagnostic tests, reliable tests to Filipinos,” he said in an interview with the ANC on Friday.

The PCHRD chief said they were prioritizing the development of diagnostic test kits for communicable diseases, including tuberculosis and hepatitis B.

“We are just prioritizing, initially, we focused on communicable diseases, common diseases we see such as tuberculosis, hepatitis B, but you also, now because of the pandemic, we’re also looking at COVID-19 and we did develop some diagnostic kits for that,” he said.

Montoya said because of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, they also developed diagnostic test kits for COVID such as GenAmplify™ COVID-19 reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) detection kit.

"But we have, also being developed, other diagnostic tests for non-communicable diseases such as for cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, and others.So we’re just prioritizing, but they’re also equally important because they’re also leading causes of morbidity and mortality in the country."

He noted that locally-developed GenAmplify™ has already been rolled out to many hospitals in the country. The test kit was developed last year by a team of 15 scientists from the Philippine Genome Center, which includes the inventor of Biotek™ M Dengue Kit, Dr. Raul V. Destura, and the University of the Philippines Manila – National Institutes of Health (UPM-NIH).

“It is actually much cheaper than the imported kits and it answers the lack of diagnostic kits, particularly during the beginning of the pandemic everyone is scrambling to get hold of this diagnostic test. Because we are able to produce it locally , we are able to have a stable supply of diagnostic kits. So it has brought down the cost and we aim to do that also for other diagnostic kits that we are developing so that they are more affordable and accessible to many Filipinos,” Montoya said.

He said other diagnostic kits for COVID-19 have also been developed.

“We have micro-PCR, it is a mini version of the RT-PCR and it is developed by the Ateneo group. We also have other kits determining the genomic characterisation or what variety or viral type the COVID-19 is,” the DOST official said.

READ MORE: https://mb.com.ph/2021/10/08/dost-covid-19-test-kits-with-90-accuracy-locally-developed-in-central-luzon/

Montoya said they were funding the development of diagnostic kits, citing that “there is a demand and we want to make diagnostics kits affordable and accessible to many Filipinos.”

He expressed hope that the value chain for diagnostic kits will be improved in the country.

“Well you know diagnostic tests, compared to drugs and other modalities, are not that advanced, and that is why our value chain is not that well-developed as far as diagnostics is concerned,” he said.

“But as more and more companies go into diagnostics and we’re seeing more and more companies into diagnostics, as more and more researchers go into development of newer diagnostic tests, we see that the environment will change and that we’ll be more capable in terms of improving the value chain,” he said.