The ASLM Laboratory Community of Practice (LabCoP) Symposium

Sponsors: African Society for Laboratory Medicine and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
Date: Sunday, 9 December 2018
Time: 8:00-17:00
Location: Niger/Enugu

No invitations necessary; open to all conference registrants

SEMINAR DESCRIPTION:
During the closure of the October 2018 face-to-face meeting in Kampala, Uganda, it was agreed that follow-up about the action planning for country teams was to be made during the ASLM2018 conference in Abuja Nigeria.

Owing to this, the ASLM LabCoP team is organizing this special ASLM2018 LabCoP session. The eleven LabCoP countries (Democratic Republic of the Congo, South Sudan, South Africa, Malawi, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya, Sierra Leone, Ethiopia) will participate to the workshop. The purpose is to assess the progress made by each country in finalizing their action planning process and securing funding for their action plans or integrating their action plans into their country operational plans (COP planning) or Global Fund programing or reprograming cycles. The workshop will also foster South-to-South exchange of best practices and promote peer-to-peer technical assistance.

LabCoP will continue to develop its own systems and tools to ensure maximum engagement and interest. During the October workshop, participants completed a survey about their experience with LabCoP communication platforms and other program-associated activities. The feedback from this survey will be shared at the satellite meeting and will foster ongoing discussions about how best to serve the LabCoP community.

Finally, drafts of the ‘LabCoP cookbook’ recipes on Demand Creation, viral load test result utilization and other key cross-cutting issues of viral load scale up will be shared with the group for input.

Seminar objectives:

  1. To assess progress in the development of country-specific action plans and their alignment with in-country funding frameworks, and
  2. To exchange best practices and foster South-to-South learning.

Presenters:

  • Charles Kiyaga, African Society for Laboratory Medicine
  • Wafaa El-Sadr, ICAP at Columbia University
  • Georges Alemnji , Office of the Global AIDS Coordinator (OGAC)
  • Eileen Burke, The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria
  • Heather Alexander, International Laboratory Branch, US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
  • Thandi Onami, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
  • Lara Vojnov, World Health Organization
  • Pascale Ondoa, African Society for Laboratory Medicine