Havana -The Cuban National Antidoping Laboratory -which will reach 15 years of age on Febrary 13- will be in charge of the doping controls practiced by the Costa Rican sports authorities during 2016.

"We have worked with the sport in Costa Rica some other times. But now, this is an agreement to analyze all the samples they pick up," Master in Sciences Ronny Montes de Oca, director of the Antidoping Laboratory, told reporters here Thursday.

The Cuban laboratory, one of the seven installations of its kind in America and among the 34 accredited in the world, has uninterruptedly 13 years of credited work, by the International Olympic Committee and the World Antidoping Agency. This has given the Cuban installation a great prestige around the planet.

"It has been very difficult to maintain the accreditation, especially because every day new substances appear, very similar to the produced ones by the proper human body, and to detect them it is necessary to have equipment of last technology, which is available in the United States, but we cannot acquire it for the economic blockade or it costs us up to three times and more," said Montes de Oca.

As he stated, "the State always has a high place presupposed for the Laboratory, which every year bears a very big international pressure because Cuban asks us to reveal the cases of doping, when our interest is to educate, to protect the sportsmen, instead of arming a scandal mediático".

For the director of the Laboratory, of only 37 years, the Cuban sport "is not completely clean for indiscipline and irresponsibilities", although it satisfies him that "in the Pan-American Games of 2015, there was not an only one sportsman of Cuba doped, between 18 cases of doping".

During three periods of five years, in addition to "contributing to the will of the country to keep the Cuban sport clean, from Fidel's idea (Castro)", specialists "qualified and qualified often inside and out of the country" they have collaborated with the struggle against the doping in Venezuela, Panama, Dominican Republic and Nicaragua, between other nations.

"Also we work with the Mexican soccer, with the Union Ciclística Internacional (UCI), International Federation of Baseball (IBAF), International Association of Federations of Athletics (IAAF) and in competitions organized here recently like those of triatlón, boxing (World Series) and Judo (Grand Prix)," he added.

On Friday, at four o'clock in the afternoon, there will celebrate the 15 anniversary of the foundation of the Laboratory, which also collaborates with the Center of Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, the Institute of Legal Medicine and the Center of Molecular Immunology, between other Cuban scientific institutions.