In the framework of the innitial "EMLab-Project", which was financed by the European Union through the European Comission`s DG-DevCo (IFS 2011/272-372), three field deployable laboratory units were established. Two lab units were commissioned in Sub Saharan African countries (Nigeria and Tanzania) and one unit was stationed in Europe (Germany). The consortium also established a pool of suitably trained scientists and technicians, who stood ready and available to deploy to diagnostic missions, if an outbreak of an infectious disease should occur.
In March 2014 an outbreak of a highly lethal fever was diagnosed as Ebola virus disease, which in the consecutive two years developed into the largest Ebola outbreak in history, heavily affecting three West African countries.
End of March 2014 the EMLab consortium, answering the request from the WHO, dispatched the first lab unit from Europe to the outbreak in Guinea, West Africa. This lab unit tested thousands of patient samples for Ebola virus. The lab unit also supported the WHO field epidemiology teams, by providing rapid genetic sequencing of positive samples.
After more then two years of service at three different consecutive sites in Guinea, the EMLab unit originally stationed in Munich, at the Bundeswehr Institute for Microbiology, was finally repatriated to Germany in October 2016.