The University of Johannesburg’s Health Science Faculty launched a mobile laboratory on Tuesday, 14 March – a laboratory on wheels that has been described as a shell that can be customised to suit the needs of the team using it, wherever they need to be.
Events such as the Vaal Dam sewage spill in 2018, the recent spilling of sewage into Durban Harbour, and floods such as those that wreaked havoc in Mozambique and Zimbabwe, were cited as among the potential situations where a mobile lab would be extremely useful.
Another critical moment in its genesis was the Carolina, Mpumalanga, diarrhoea outbreak, Barnard said.The then-minister of water and sanitation said she had to listen to moms crying about babies who were critically ill, asking: ‘Why can’t we sort this out now!’ And we knew we still had to go sample and drive three hours back to the laboratory, before we could even start the analysis,” he said.