This Moroccan Based Company Created Breast And Leukemia Cancer Tests To Cut Down Waiting Time And Costs

According to a report by The Guardian, the Moroccan Association for Advanced Sciences, Innovation and Research (MASciR) will be releasing its very first African-manufactured diagnostic test kit to check for leukemia and breast cancer.

This particular move will not only help cut costs for patients across the neighboring countries, but it will also help with waiting times for results of these kinds of tests all throughout the continent.

With this new Moroccan-produced test for breast cancer and leukemia, Africa has managed to create its very first domestic cancer test, which significantly reduces both waiting time and cost to patients.

Normally, these kinds of tests are imported from such regions as Europe or North America, and because of that, they usually take too much time and money, something hospitals and medical centers in poorer nations don’t necessarily have.

Executive board member of MASciR, Hassan Sefrioui, says, “The price of the kit can be double that of what it would cost to manufacture it locally. It is also a long process. It can take weeks or months for the kits to arrive.”

Moreover, The Guardian also shares that Morocco itself will gain a lot of help with these tests, since breast cancer happens to be the most prevalent form of fatal cancer for women in the country.

In addition, these imported tests normally require the samples to be sent back to France for diagnosis, making them costlier and time consuming at that. Meanwhile, the MASciR’s leukemia test, which has already been used on at least 400 patients, managed to gather the test results in just a few hours.

Notably, MASciR was also one of the first African companies to develop and manufacture COVID-19 tests, which were also sold to the French-speaking nations of Senegal, Ivory Coast, Tunisia, and even to Rwanda. These new cancer tests will also probably be available for sale and use in these countries first as well.

Due to the requirement of imported raw materials, there is a chance that MASciR’s tests may be a bit more expensive than the ones imported from Europe for the first few years at least. However, the officials at the African Pharmaceutical Technology Foundation do believe that if MASciR’s efforts are well-supported, this will help in bringing the prices of their tests down quite significantly, and faster too.