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LIMS Transition Meeting attendees complete teambuilding exercise
APHL is now piloting a system for electronic test ordering and results reporting
at the arbovirus laboratory run by the Institut Pasteur in Ho Chi Minh City,
which tests specimens for Zika, dengue and other arthropod-borne diseases
for 20 of Vietnam’s 58 provinces.
Kakkar said, “We want to provide a good solution for all these [provincial]
laboratories to refer these samples up even before the physical specimen
arrives [at the Institut Pasteur] and to be able to securely get results back.”
That solution is an online portal delivering “security, efficiency [and]
standardization,” while negating the need for special software. “All [the
provincial laboratories] need is a computer and an internet connection.”
APHL is also helping to install a LIMS at the emergency operations center (EOC).
Said Landgraf, “The EOC is one of our highest GHSA priorities. These are meant
to be information hubs so that decisionmakers and epidemiologists . . . will
have all the information they need to monitor case reports, lab reports [and]
media related to infectious disease outbreaks. APHL’s work with us on LIMS is
going to create one of the key data sources in the EOC network, which will be a
very valuable tool.”
The GHSA-assisted push to create a global public health laboratory
infrastructure coincides with a resurgence of pathogens, both ancient and
modern. Since August, for example, Rift Valley fever has afflicted dozens of
people in western Niger, killing more than 20. Zika virus—first identified in
Uganda—is now a significant threat in parts of the Americas. And the problem
of drug-resistant “superbugs” has become so pronounced that it was the
subject of a rare, health-related United Nations summit in September.
The start of an outbreak is an intimate affair—one patient, one family, perhaps
a child’s tragic death. But preventing or ending an outbreak is a governmental
affair, requiring the ability to definitively detect and track pathogens as they
move among local, national and international populations. Needless to say,
this cannot be done without the kind of global laboratory network that the
GHSA promotes and APHL is helping to strengthen. Said Landgraf, “Laboratory
testing is one of the quickest and earliest indicators of an outbreak that we
can have.”
Reshma Kakkar, Kenneth Landgraf and Hien Thu Bui review materials at Nam Tu Liem Health District Health Center
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Fall 2016 LAB MATTERS
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