Visit to partner in Cotonou, Benin

On 22-29 May 2021, Liselotte Hardy and Barbara Barbé (ITM’s coordinating and principal investigator of the SIMBLE project) visited the “Centre National Hospitalier et Universitaire de Pneumo-Phtisiologie" (CNHU-HKM) in Cotonou, Benin.

Together with Prof Dissou Affolabi, the director of this hospital, and the local study team, a suitable place was identified to install a small-scale production facility for blood culture bottles and culture media. This production unit will be designed in Barcelona, Spain by “Reactivos para Diagnóstico” in a “production container-format” and installed in Cotonou, Benin. Quality systems for the production of quality-assured products will be implemented and the facility will be ISO certified.

During the SIMBLE project, blood culture bottles and other culture media for bacteriology work-up will be produced in this production facility. These culture media products will be used during the field-testing phase in the study sites of Cotonou and Boko (Benin) as well as Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso). The local production of microbiology products at competitive prices, such as blood culture bottles, will enable research centres in sub-Saharan Africa to further expand their research and surveillance activities of bloodstream infections and antibiotic resistance.

The production unit will be placed next to the “Laboratoire de Référence des Mycobactéries” (LRM) BSL-3 container laboratories already installed . The available area is located at the hospital campus of the “Centre National Hospitalier et Universitaire de Pneumo-Phtisiologie" in Cotonou, Benin.