Context
In July 2019, Professor Muyembe-Tamfum, Director of the National Biomedical Research Institute (INRB) and winner of the 2015 Christophe Mérieux Prize, alerted the Mérieux Foundation’s President Alain Mérieux to the urgent need to increase diagnostic capacity to combat the country’s worst-ever outbreak of the Ebola virus, and the second-largest epidemic ever recorded in the world.
In response to this alert, the Mérieux Foundation sent shipping container laboratories to the DRC by air in October 2019, co-funded by USAID via a partnership with the Mérieux Foundation USA. Ownership of these facilities was transferred to INRB’s provincial office in Goma. The laboratory also joined the GABRIEL network in 2021.
