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Through the newly-formed Cerba Lancet Africa, the Joint Venture will serve millions of health professionals and patients across Africa, providing internationally-accredited, high-quality pathology services for timely and accurate diagnosis of a wide variety of illnesses and their effective management/COURTESY

Kenya

Lancet Laboratories merge Africa operations with Cerba HealthCare

Through the newly-formed Cerba Lancet Africa, the Joint Venture will serve millions of health professionals and patients across Africa, providing internationally-accredited, high-quality pathology services for timely and accurate diagnosis of a wide variety of illnesses and their effective management/COURTESY

NAIROBI, Kenya, Jan 10 – Medical laboratory services provider Lancet Laboratories that operates in Kenya and 14 other African countries and its leading counterpart in Europe Cerba HealthCare have merged operations in a joint Venture.

The move is aimed at strengthening the provision of effective, evidence-based healthcare across Africa.

Through the newly-formed Cerba Lancet Africa, the Joint Venture will serve millions of health professionals and patients across Africa, providing internationally-accredited, high-quality pathology services for timely and accurate diagnosis of a wide variety of illnesses and their effective management.

Cerba Lancet Africa will now manage a network of more than 100 laboratories previously owned by Lancet across 11 African countries including Kenya with over 1,400 employees serving more than 1.3 million patients a year, and generating over Sh5 billion in turnover in 2018.

The JV covers operations in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Botswana, Ghana, Mozambique,
Nigeria, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

However, Lancet’s operations in the Republic of South Africa, where its headquaters is based, will not be part of the Joint Venture.

“Lancet’s brand will be retained in all countries where Lancet Group of Laboratories are already operating, including in Kenya where it is incorporated as Pathologists Lancet Kenya (PLK) and operates 38 labs and service points across the country, with Lancet Uganda, Tanzania and Rwanda as PLK’s subsidiaries,” the joint statement read.

The Competition Authority of Kenya (CAK) in December 2018, , approved the deal for the new JV to take over Lancet Laboratories South Africa’s shareholding while retaining the local shareholder Dr Ahmed Kalebi, since the transaction met the threshold for exclusion
specified in the Mergers Threshold Guidelines under the CAK Act.

The legal notice from CAK is expected to be published in the Kenya Gazette in the coming days.

“Our common goal is to develop medical services in regions where we are already present and to expand into other countries. Alongside our partner Lancet Laboratories, we are also planning ambitious investment programme to offer innovative services in clinical pathology that meet the needs of patients, health professionals and healthcare organisations, alongside businesses across the continent”, states Jérôme Thill, Deputy Chief Executive Officer of Cerba HealthCare.

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With headquarters in Paris, France and over 6,300 employees, Cerba Healthcare operates a network of laboratories and technical facilities across Europe—mainly in France, Belgium, Luxembourg and Italy—that serve more than 50 countries in Europe, Africa and Middle East.

It’s also operates a central lab testing for clinical trials for pharmaceutical and biotech industries and for diagnostic trials as well as veterinary and genetics.

“The broad expertise of both our groups, Cerba HealthCare, a leader in clinical pathology in Europe, and Lancet, a leader in clinical pathology in South Africa, coupled with our respective knowledge of the African continent across very different and complementary territories, will be real strengths for our joint venture. We are delighted to partner with Cerba HealthCare and are looking forward to expanding our efforts together and working to improve the health of African citizens,” said Peter Cole, CEO of Lancet Laboratories.

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