“The completion of the human genome project in 2003 has ushered humanity into a new era of genomic medicine. AiBST cannot afford to lag behind in this exciting scientific adventure” Fredrick Mandizvidza (Managing Director, AiBST)

AiBST was honoured by a visit from the Permanent Secre-tary of the Ministry of Higher and Tertiary Education and his team on the 23rd of March 2009. The Managing Director of AiBST, Mr Fredrick Mandizvidza and Mr Jus-ten Manasa led the team around the institute with Mr Manasa ex-plaining the activities undertaken in the laboratory.

Dr Mbizvo was very impressed with the work that is being carried out at AiBST and promised to provide support to the institute through the Zimbabwe Develop-ment Fund (ZIMDEF). With all the achievements made by the insti-tute, the Permanent Secretary was surprised that the institute did not get any government funding to-wards the building of a sophisti-cated technological platform for diagnosis, treatment and monitoring and evolution of HIV/AIDS, TB and Malaria patients. He couldn’t hide his joy upon interacting with the team of young scientists who con-tinue to steadily make strides never experienced before in this country in the area of drug discovery, develop-ment, deployment and their safe use among African populations.

We hope that he will also fulfil his promise of ensuring that AiBST will get scholarships to China in its quest to strengthen its human capacity for effec-tive technology transfer from developed countries to Zimbabwe