3 October 2021, Tehran – The WHO country office in the Islamic Republic of Iran has contributed to strengthening national diagnostic capacity in the Islamic Republic of Iran by procuring IT devices for the National Influenza Centre in Tehran.

The devices were officially handed over by the WHO Representative to Islamic Republic of Iran Dr Syed Jaffar Hussain to Dr Talat Mokhtari-Azad, Director of the Iranian National Influenza Centre, Head of Virology Department, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, School of Public Health, during a visit on Wednesday, 29 September 2021, accompanied by a team of WHO experts.

The equipment included state-of-the-art devices such as desktop computers, laptops, tablets and printers, purchased and delivered through donations from the German Federal Foreign Office.

They will be used along with the genome sequencing machines in analysing next generation sequencing data and interpreting the results for better understanding of the circulating microbe variants in the country.

Genome sequencing is the process of determining the entirety, or nearly the entirety, of the DNA sequence of an organism's genome at a single time. The support will go a long way in helping to scale up diagnostic and track and trace activities in the country.