infectious diseases
Building Lab Capacity in Africa:
The Democratic Republic of the Congo
by Melissa Warren, senior specialist, Influenza
APHL Training Activities
Through its global health and scientific
programs, APHL supports a wide range of
training activities worldwide. While some
engagements are relatively long-term,
others, such as discipline-specific training
workshops, may run only one week.
Regardless of duration, all APHL trainings
aim to cumulatively build capacity for
laboratory testing in targeted regions.
In 2017, APHL delivered four regional
infectious disease-related trainings in
Africa, all of which were attended by DRC:
• Packaging and Shipping for Respiratory
and CSF Specimens – Uganda
• Influenza Virus Isolation – Senegal
• Zika and Yellow Fever Laboratory
Diagnostics – Uganda
The DRC team works together at the Influenza Laboratory Mentorship Program during the July 2017 kickoff meeting in Kigali,
Rwanda. From Left: Hugo Kavunga, Norma Tavakoli and Edith Nkwembe
Recently emails shot back and forth
through cyberspace with introductions
between Albany and Kinshasa:
“I’m glad to work with you once
again, [the] first time was in
2011 if my memory is good!”
“Excellent memory! You are correct
we met in May 2011. I look forward
to seeing you again in the future.”
These messages between an APHL
consultant, US Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention staff and the
National Institute Biomedical Research
(INRB) of the Democratic Republic of
the Congo (DRC) marked the beginning
of the APHL-CDC Influenza Laboratory
Mentorship Program in Africa. Designed
to build capacity to detect a novel human
influenza infection, the program will
operate in the DRC and in nine other
African countries. Developing this
capacity is critical to global preparedness
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LAB MATTERS Fall 2017
and rapid response planning, and
particularly in Africa, where flyways
bring birds from Europe and Asia,
creating the potential for movement of
avian influenza. The prospect is a major
concern for public health officials.
The new program will assign a mentor
to guide each African laboratory toward
its goals. At the INRB, which is working
to improve quality management and
to meet the World Health Organization
terms of reference for National Influenza
Centers requirements, the mentor
visited the country in 2011 for an
influenza laboratory capacity review
assessment and met the local CDC staff,
who remembered the encounter from
six years earlier. Such reconnections
are becoming common given the
breadth of APHL’s activities in Africa.
• WHO Laboratory Quality Stepwise
Implementation tool – Rwanda
The email exchange between APHL, CDC
and the INRB ended in a discussion of
logistics for an upcoming conference
call. How would the INRB be dialed into
the call? The question was a humbling
reminder of the obstacles confronted
by international partners in their daily
work. A call that would be a simple task
in many parts of the world is not so
simple in the DRC and other countries
with limited infrastructure. This
makes progress at laboratories in these
countries all the more impressive. ■
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