Pro-Gen was formed in early 2004 and joined with Barker Medical into one entity with effect from 1st March 2006 trading under the name Pro-Gen Diagnostics.
Barker Medical (Pty) Ltd was formed in 2001 to promote the sales of a range of products for microbiological identification, specialising in microbial serology and products for the collection, transport and growth of bacteria.

Southern Africa has been especially hard hit by the AIDS epidemic. Increasingly world attention has been drawn to finding ways to curb the spread of HIV in Africa and there are now a number of projects sponsored by international aid organisations and research bodies. One such, sponsored by the Bill Gates Foundation and USAID, is designed to measure the prevalence of HSV-2 and to investigate if any link exists between the spread of HIV and HSV. We have been successful in securing the contract to supply HSV serology kits from Focus Technologies in the US for this entire trial, which is to be conducted in 16 sites throughout Africa.

We have also been active in promoting the Focus HSV kits in the private pathology sector, and now have the majority of this market. In recognition of this success we have just been granted the rights to the entire Focus range of products (the rest of this range of products was formerly sold by one of our competitors).

Our company also distributes a range of specialized bacterial identification and sensitivity testing products, as well mycoplasma confirmation products, both from International Microbio in France. We have just completed a programme of workshops around the country promoting a number of serological markers for EBV, H.pylori and Chlamydia from Hiss Diagnostics in Germany.

On the other side of the business we provide a comprehensive range of media, supplements and antibiotics for the culturing and sensitivity testing of bacteria. These we source from two UK companies: LabM and Abtek Biologicals. In the last two years we have captured most of the available market for specimen transport swabs for Medical Wire and Equipment, also based in the UK.