Coordinated work between the public sector, businesses, academia, and non-profit organisations resulted in the initiative to purchase, and donate, 40 Cepheid GeneXpert testing machines. These, along with, 18,000 Xpert Xpress SARS-COV-2 testing kits were intended for the government of Costa Rica. The initiative was led by the CRUSA Foundation, AmCham and AED, with the Ministry of Health and Costa Rica’s national healthcare system (CCSS).
The Scheinberg Relief Fund supported the ‘Proactive Testing’ initiative in Costa Rica, which managed to raise $1.8 million to contribute to the regionalization of the Covid-19 tests. The initiative secured the purchase of 60,000 test kits to detect Covid-19 and 40 testing machinest to process PCR tests. The Scheinberg Relief Fund alone facilitated the purchase of 4,032 test kits.
The donations enabled the Costa Rican public health sector to increase its capacity to detect the SARS Cov-2 virus, which enabled better decision making and the provision of decentralized care, both in the taking of samples and in the processing and analysis of the results. For the first time in history, specialised diagnostic laboratories were installed in the regions of Central Pacific, Chorotega, Brunca and Atlantic, representing a turning point in the geographical decentralisation of the diagnosis of Covid-19 and other pathologies.
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