The curtains over the Sixth Biennial Conference of African Society of Laboratory Medicine (2023ASLM) has been drawn with a call to action to integrate diagnostics across disease programmes to deliver high-quality people-centered integrated services and care.
The directors of medical and public health laboratories of the African Union member states have called on national governments, donors, partners, and implementers to resource laboratory directorates to perform their roles to oversee all national diagnostics services.
They craved profound visibility through available budget outlays and programmatic plans, upcoming funding streams, planning, decision-making and grant-making for diagnostics and laboratory related activities.
They are worried that 15 years since the Maputo declaration, gaps persisted in the delivery of critical laboratory and diagnostics services within the African region and concerned about the limited.
They noticed the critical role laboratory and diagnostics services played in the delivery of high-quality clinical care, epidemic preparedness and the early detection and response to emerging outbreaks.
Signatories, who initialled to the call were Dr Jane Ruth Aceng, Minister of Health, Uganda; Dr Holenn Serge Emmanuel, Deputy Minister of Health, DRC; Dr Yenew Kebede, Africa CDC; Mr Nqobile Ndlovu, CEO of ASLM and Dr Susan Nabadda, Laboratory Directors Forum (LABDF).
The four-day ASLM2023 conference, which took place in Cape Town, South Africa was held on the theme “Shaping Laboratory Systems and Diagnostics Services for the 21st Century: Embracing the Change.”
The ASLM2023 received 1,200 delegates from five continents with representatives from 58 countries, 55 expert speakers and 50 presentations, 44 exhibitors as well as the African Union, the Africa CDC and South African Laboratory Diagnostics Association being partners.
Roche Africa became the strategic sponsor of ASLM2023 with the gold category going to SD Biosensor, Hologic and Abbott with eight sponsors making up the bronze category including; Illumina, Beckman Coulter, Cepheld, Lasec, Qiagen, Sysmex, Siemens Healthcare and ThermoFisher Scientific.
The next ASLM is likely to be held in Morocco.
GNA