TRAINING OF SCIENTIFIC PROFESSIONALS:

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 IMPORTANT STEP TO THE RIGHT DIAGNOSIS

Each year in sub-Saharan Africa, ∼12 million people die, and the majority of death are generally attributed to infectious diseases.

The clinical examinations are not sufficient enough to distinguish for example malaria, meningitis or sepsis - all of them require fast action.

Reliable laboratory diagnostic is important for all medical specialties, especially for internal and pediatric medicine. The majority of African laboratories cannot consistently provide even basic laboratory services, leading to an error rate of over 50%.

This correlates with misdiagnosis, inadequate use of antibiotics, decrease in patients’ condition, and unnecessary loss of life. Therefore, resource-poor provincial hospitals lack another important tool in the detection and treatment of diseases. Nevertheless, laboratory medicine is a neglected field in patient care.

Laboratories are usually given low priority and recognition in most national health delivery systems. Therefore, quality laboratory services remain to be among the major challenges for appropriate and timely responses to epidemics, for disease control and patient management. Very few laboratories have capabilities for diagnosing highly infectious diseases such as viral haemorrhagic fever. Shipping of specimens results in delayed responses to outbreaks.

 

We therefore aim to implement international standards for diagnostic laboratories and to work towards quality education for laboratory and scientific professionals to improve patient care.

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TIMELY RESPONSE TO EPIDEMICS, DISEASE CONTROL AND PATIENT MANAGEMENT