Laboratories Upgrade towards WHO-AFRO Laboratory Accreditation
Ethiopian 14 health laboratories, which are enrolled in the World Health Organization and African Regional Office (WHO-AFRO) Laboratory Accreditation Program, have received different star levels of Laboratory Accreditation.
Among the 24 labs, which have completed the three phases of SLMTA trainings and improvement projects implementations including National External Audit, one laboratory has received Star four Level of accreditation. In addition to that, two laboratories have received Star Three Level and three laboratories have received Star Two Level. The remaining eight health laboratories have received Star One Level of Laboratory Accreditation.
According to Gudeta Tibiso (PhD), Director of Regional Laboratory Capacity Building Directorate in EHNRI, the accreditation process which follows stepwise fashion towards health system strengthening is believed to facilitate laboratories to provide quality laboratory services.
Captain Masresha Ageze, from North Command Referral Hospital Laboratory said that ‘’before the engagement to the Accreditation Program, let alone the quality of lab results, most of examinations including rapid test, accustomed to contract out to other laboratories in Mekele. Nevertheless, presently, we managed to handle all examinations in house and TAT has become shorter, in addition to reliable results delivery to the physicians’’
‘’Those credible achievements are evidenced with the findings of the customer’s satisfaction survey we conducted. Not only this, our improvements in the laboratory have also taken as model work process in the North Command as a whole. For this, we would like to thank EHNRI, our partners and the Management in our Referral Hospital and I can assure that we are confident enough to achieve the required star level’’ added Captain Masresha.
It is known that, the WHO-AFRO Laboratory Accreditation Program that assists laboratories in improving internal function and systems until the achievements of international accreditation employs laboratories in self-improvement processes and assigns a step-wise accreditation scheme to encourage continuous improvement and action. The accreditation, that has SLMTA training program as an integral part of the laboratory self-improvement process also provides documentation that the laboratory has the capability and the capacity to detect, identify, and promptly report all diseases of public health significance that may be present in clinical and research specimens.