Laos is a landlocked country in Southeast Asia that borders China, Cambodia, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam. It is included on the United Nations’ list of Least Developed Countries, and the United States is working hard to help the people and government achieve their development goals, and to enhance the country’s sovereignty in the face of its larger and powerful neighbors.

As the pandemic spread to Laos, the government’s ability to test patients was extremely limited. One of the top priorities for US diplomats deployed to Laos has been to improve the country’s testing capacity in order to better understand how many people have been infected. With that information, they can then fight the COVID-19 outbreak.

However, because of how quickly coronavirus spread across the world, neither the U.S. Embassy, USAID, nor the U.S. military was able to provide the needed test kits as quickly as SoA. Although the USG has now donated over $3.44M to Laos, SoA’s rapid response will fill a critical Laotian gap quickly. Spirit of America has committed to providing 2,500 test kits to the Ministry of Health in Laos so testing can expand while government funding is being allocated to develop a sustainable testing regime.

Efforts like these help continue the development of a modern partnership between the United States and Laos that is focused on shared goals for the future, building on current and past operations to address the legacy of war including extensive removals of unexploded ordnance from the Laotian countryside and the recovery of US service members unaccounted for during the “Secret War” in Laos which ran concurrent to the Vietnam War.

With your help, we can supply these critical tests and support Americans deployed to Laos who are fighting to stop the coronavirus pandemic.