the country, including remote areas”. According to MTek founder and CEO Raul V. Destura, early identification is critical to provide a quick treatment and control of ASF. Mr. Destura highlighted the benefits of the test kit in his statement. He said, “ASF threatens not just the livelihood of our farmers but also our food security. With many Filipinos struggling to put food on the table, a pork crisis on top of that problem would be tragic”. He added, “We do not just want to sit on the sidelines while our foreign counterparts find solutions… The ASF kit is just one of MTek’s contributions to finding diagnostics solutions to the country’s health problems”.
According to the World Organization for Animal Health, ASF is a serious and extremely infectious hemorrhagic viral disease in pigs that offers no health hazards to humans. The disease was discovered in the country for the first time in 2019 and has decreased the hog supply, resulting in the increase in pork prices. Lipa City, San Jose, Malvar, Rosario, Taysan, and Nasugbu in Batangas were declared legally free of African Swine Fever in July by the Department of Agriculture. Furthermore, the government is also testing and evaluating the efficacy of the ASF vaccine in collaboration with ten domestic companies.
According to MTek’s website, it manufactures portable diagnostic test kits for specific infectious diseases. The Biotek-M DengueAqua Kit and the GenAmplify coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) testing kit are some of the kits created by MTek in partnership with other companies.
