KIGALI, Rwanda – When Aliyu Attahiru took over as head of the Biomedical Laboratory Sciences Department at the Kigali Health Institute in early 2008, he faced an immediate challenge: a badly out-of-date curriculum for the Bachelors of Science degree program.

With the old lesson plans, his students would be ill prepared for their work in laboratories around Rwanda, especially in running tests on infectious diseases, including HIV/AIDS. But in a program funded by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, volunteers from the American Society for Clinical Pathologists (ASCP) were lined up to help update the curriculum. Their new lesson plans were put in place in January 2009.

``It really helped us,’’ Attahiru said. ``Now the curriculum is the most developed of its kind in Rwanda. And the work done by the ASCP volunteers makes our work much easier.’’

Attahiru, a 40-year-old father of two from Nigeria, said the American volunteers also introduced new ways of teaching, including giving instruction to the staff on how to create lessons on PowerPoint. The ASCP teams also brought laptop computerd of Certification has teamed up with the Institute for Global Outreach to offer a new qualification available to our colleagues in developing countries in Africa, Asia and South America. The International Qualification in Laboratory Operations (QLO) will be launched at the International Federation of Biomedical Laboratory Science World Congress in Nairobi, Kenya in June.

Laboratory Professors Brush Up on Teaching Skills in Cote d’Ivoire
In December 2009, ASCP staff Roland Guidry, Technical Manager, and Alisa Tank, Project Assistant, traveled to Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire with three ASCP consultants to conduct a Teaching Methodologies Workshop. The workshop took place at INFAS, the national training school for health care and laboratory professionals, and comprised 25 individuals working at INFAS, RETRO-CI, the Pasteur Institute, and the University of Cocody.

Two Weeks in Tanzania: A Situational Gap Analysis of Tanzania’s Certificate Level Schools of Medical Technology
During the last two weeks of January, 2009, ASCP Global Outreach consultants, Wendy Arneson and Perthena Latchaw left the cold North American winter and found themselves on a cross-country adventure in tropical Tanzania. Ms. Arneson and Ms. Latchaw were part of a group charged with the task of performing a Situational Gap Analysis of Tanzania’s certificate level schools of medical technology. more...