Meeting in Ethiopia Discusses Establishment of Integrated Lab Services

A stakeholders meeting opened on Monday to confer on ways of establishing a sustainable integrated laboratory services to assist the health sector in Ethiopia.

The annual laboratory review meetings which assess progress, challenges and opportunities are held with a view to provide platform to give recognition to laboratory’s role in strengthening the overall health system.

The two-day Annual Review Meeting on the Ethiopian Public Health Laboratory System is expected to create a shared vision on establishing sustainable integrated laboratory services for TB, Malaria and HIV in the country.

During the review meeting, organized by US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) and Ethiopian Health and Nutrition Research Institute (EHNRI), it was noted that it was necessary to strengthen the laboratory infrastructure at all levels to improve service quality and achieve targets.

PEPFAR Ethiopia, through Centers of Disease Control and Prevention-Ethiopia (CDC-E), is providing financial and technical assistance to strengthen national laboratory services.

US Embassy’s Deputy Chief of Mission Deborah Malac said at the opening session some of the assistance include physical infrastructure renovation and/or construction of laboratories, sample referral testing and result reporting, external quality assurance programs, standardized training, among others.

Deborah stated that in 2004 alone, the PEPFAR budget for the laboratory was $3,080,000, while the budget for 2008 was $28,100,000, which is almost a 10-fold increase in just four years.

The Deputy Chief of Mission assured that PEPFAR was strongly committed in supporting the Government of Ethiopia’s master plan for strengthening public Health laboratory system.

It was hoped that by the end of FY 2009, diagnosis of HIV/TB, opportunistic infections (OIs) and other sexually transmitted infections and laboratory monitoring services will be provided to more than 450,000 pre-ART patients on care and 210,000 patients on ART, as per the “National Guidelines for Use of ARV Drugs”.

Government Officials, representatives from CDC Atlanta and USAID Washington attended the opening session of the review meeting.

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