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Laboratory Systems Strengthening

In every country where I-TECH works, health needs and program goals are best met when local lab-ethlaboratories and services are reliable, consistent, and readily available. To deliver potentially life-saving results quickly and efficiently, laboratories must be well equipped and staffed with trained experts. Strengthened laboratories also have the capacity to share information with other laboratories worldwide, allowing them to become part of a global community and extending their resources.

I-TECH’s Laboratory Team addresses the development of sustainable laboratory systems and laboratory capacity in countries throughout the world. The team is comprised of staff at the University of Washington (UW) in Seattle, as well as locally-based staff in Botswana, Ethiopia, Haiti, and Namibia.

The Laboratory Team takes as its vision the development and support of quality laboratories capable of participating in the global laboratory network for the detection, control, and treatment of disease.

To that end, the team supports ministries of health in resource-limited settings by providing:

  • Leadership and management education and training;
  • Expertise in implementing new technologies; and
  • Support and guidance to develop updated, sustainable, laboratory systems.

microscopeActivities

Current Laboratory Team activities include pre-service curriculum development; in-service training; support of ministries of health in strategic planning; implementation of laboratory information systems with I-TECH’s Informatics Team; and implementation of new laboratory technologies.  As the team expands its scope, members will continue to prioritize these activities while responding to needs of partnering agencies as they arise.

Recognizing the Importance of Laboratory Systems

I-TECH’s work in laboratory systems strengthening has been ongoing, but the newly-formed Laboratory Team represents a renewed and focused commitment to it. By providing a central organizing body at headquarters to support country offices, I-TECH has recognized laboratory strengthening as a core component of its work.

The Laboratory Team will continue to bring additional direction to the program by leveraging partnerships within UW, the University of California, San Francisco, and external collaborators. This includes identifying and implementing new technologies, supporting the development of sustainable, high-quality laboratory systems, and strengthening laboratory management and leadership through certificate and graduate education programs.

Spotlight: I-TECH Ethiopia Supports Early Infant Diagnosis by
Strengthening Regional Laboratories

According to the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, there were an estimated 79,183 pregnancies by HIV-infected mothers in Ethiopia in 2008. These babies are at an elevated risk of acquiring the virus from their mothers, but until recently there was limited laboratory capacity to perform early infant HIV diagnosis.

Testing infants for HIV requires special consideration. Infants born to HIV-infected mothers acquire HIV antibodies while still in the womb. Thus, the most commonly used HIV antibody test may deliver positive results during the first months of life, regardless of the infants' actual HIV status.

For this reason, specialized lab tests that actually look for the virus, not the antibody, are the only reliable means of determining the HIV infection status of infants immediately after birth. One such test, the polymerase chain reaction (DNA-PCR) test, can be conducted on small blood samples that have been collected from the infant and dried onto filter paper ("dried blood spots"). This method is useful because the samples don’t have to be refrigerated and are relatively easy to prepare, store, and transport across long distances in rural Ethiopia.

To harness these technologies, I-TECH has led efforts to upgrade regional laboratories in northern Ethiopia with the equipment, supplies, and staff training necessary to conduct DNA-PCR analysis. As a result of these upgrades, the Afar, Amhara, and Tigray regions have nearly doubled the number of infants being tested for HIV, while dramatically shortening the time in which an accurate diagnosis can be delivered.
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