The ASCP Institute has joined forces with the World Health Organization Regional Office for Africa (WHO-AFRO) and the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) to develop consensus standards on laboratory tests, instrumentation, and supplies to help countries in their efforts to overcome HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria.

Major global partners supporting the effort include the World Bank; the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC); the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria; the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Clinton Foundation.

The effort began with a consensus conference Jan. 22-24, 2008, in Maputo, Mozambique. Jorge Tomo, MD, Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Health of Mozambique, chaired the conference under the theme “Helping to Expand Sustainable Quality Testing to Improve the Care and Treatment of People Infected with and Affected by HIV/AIDS, TB and Malaria.” This event was a follow up to two earlier African laboratory network meetings (Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in November 2006 and Harare, Zimbabwe in September 2001), organized by WHO-AFRO and CDC.

One hundred twenty experts representing 33 countries, including 28 Sub-Saharan African countries, as well as Cambodia, Haiti, India, Thailand, and Vietnam, attended. ASCP President Lee H. Hilborne, MD, MPH, DLM(ASCP)^CM, FASCP, and Executive Vice President John R. Ball, MD, JD, MACP, led the ASCP delegation, which included Michele Best, MT(ASCP), Anna M. Murphy, MT(ASCP)^CM, and ASCP Institute staff Barbara Hoffman, MA, MT(ASCP), and Stacy Kancijanic, MA.

The three objectives of the workshop were to review and agree on a list of supplies and tests needed at each level of the integrated, tiered laboratory network; to develop a consensus to guide standardization of laboratory equipment at each level of the laboratory network; and to develop a consensus on key considerations to guide maintenance and service contracts at various levels of the laboratory network.

Before the conference, ASCP experts gathered information from the CDC and Clinton Foundation to draft an initial consensus document that served as the starting point for discussions at the conference. They were Murphy, MT(ASCP)^CM, Roland Guidry, and Bette Jamieson, MEd, MT(ASCP)SH . During the conference, Best was named Master Rapporteur, responsible for leading the development of the final consensus report, which is tentatively due for completion this summer.

Another outcome of the conference was the release of a written declaration that established the global commitment to strengthen integrated national laboratory systems in a public health perspective.