The announcement came at the end of a three-day conference that brought together 12 African countries to discuss an accreditation process to strengthen laboratories across the continent.
The accreditation plan to be launched at the National Reference Laboratory “as quickly as possible,” said Dr. Odette Mukabayire Kramer, Director General of NRL.
Accreditation means that the turnaround time to test samples, the process at reception, and the labeling of samples will all be regulated. “When your lab is accredited that means that internationally, [it is] known that you can really deliver reliable results”, said Mukabayire.
The accreditation plan for laboratories across Africa was launched by the World Health Organization (WHO)-AFRO, Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and with support from American Society for Clinical Pathology and the Clinton Foundation. If implemented, laboratories would be standardized at the WHO level, gaining international recognition.
Accreditation is the only way to ensure quality in laboratories across Rwanda, said Binagwaho. “We have done our best to provide quantity of care,” said Binagwaho, speaking to RNA after the conference. “But what is quantity when you cannot afford quality?”
Project San Francisco in Kigali, a HIV/AIDS research centre that provides clinical care and counselling supported by Emery University in Atlanta, is currently the only lab in Rwanda with accreditation.
“But we don’t have any public lab that is accredited here in Rwanda,” said Kramer.
A nine month accreditation pilot project in Uganda in 2008 “was a roaring success,” said Ritu Shrivastava, a microbiologist from CDC-Atlanta and one of the organizers of the conference. Seventeen participants from 15 labs received tools for management, implemented advocacy and saw improved turnaround times and quality. “Results from the pilot were stunning,” said Shrivastava.
The conference was organized because of a need, Shrivastava explained. She said the lack of trust physicians have in labs, complaints from clients and the low priority given to labs by health ministries prompted the launch of the accreditation process.
The first step is strategic planning under the umbrella of government policy. The countries attending the meeting were encouraged to go back to their countries and develop a plan to implement accreditation on their home soil.
In Rwanda, the plan is for the NRL to be the first of many public health institutions to have international standards. At the start of a three-day meeting of policy makers in Kigali, African health officials signed off an accreditation system for laboratories across the continent.
All of the referral hospitals in the country are going to go through the accreditation process to ensure high international standards, said Binagwaho. She said after the NRL is accredited within two years, the process of accrediting district labs will begin.
“When we do [accreditation] at the national level, it’s not enough. We have to go to the centralized level,” said Binagwaho. After district hospitals and labs are internationally standardized Binagwaho said the next stage will be health facilities “because the whole objective is to give quality and quantity of care in a consistent manner to the population and they are living at the community level near the health centres.”