Capacity building: WAHO, ASLM train medical laboratory professionals in Lagos

The West African Health Organization has organised a Mentorship and Coaching Skill Development Training Workshop for medical laboratory professionals in the region.
The training workshop, held in Lagos, Nigeria from November 25 to 29, 2019, was in collaboration with the African Society for Laboratory Medicine and funded by German Cooperation, KFW.
The Coordinator of the workshop, Dr. Abdourahmane Sow, while speaking at the closing ceremony on November 29, said effective laboratory diagnosis is very important to achieving ISO 1589 accreditation.
Sow, therefore, charged participants to make use of mentorship skills they have acquired to improve on Laboratory systems in their respective countries.
“I think When they get home they will start improving their own system to ensure they can get adequate laboratory by 2021,” Dr. Sow, a professional at WAHO headquarters said.
Dr. Ojuolape Solanke, WAHO Liaison Officer in Nigeria, harped on improving laboratory surveillance with a view to preventing epidemics and diseases.
Solanke said: “The region has to take its own health seriously by improving laboratory surveillance to prevent epidemics and diseases across the border and this is why we are here.
“The training workshop has been on mentoring and improving quality management in the laboratory systems.
“I am sure you have a lot of action plans to take back to your countries to implement.
“It is for the good of your country, it is for the good of the region and also for the good of the global community at large.”
Representative of the sponsors, GFA Consulting Group, Dr. Olivier Manigart, said the training project is focusing specifically on four key areas: transport of samples, data management, waste management and also biosecurity, which, according to him, “is a crucial problem for Nigeria.”
Dr. Manigart, a Senior Team Leader at GFA Consulting Group, said the KFW funded project, which covers training and helping to equip laboratories, is to the tune of €10 millions.
He said: “The backbone of our project is to train people on the path to ISO1589 accreditation.
“We are planning to train some more in French and Portuguese and English.
“We are trying to equip in Nigeria five regional reference laboratories in different places of the country.”
The Lagos State Commissioner for Health, Prof. Akin Abayomi, posited: “You can’t practice medicine without good diagnosis whether laboratory or radiological diagnosis.”
Abayomi later presented certificates to all the participants drawn from ECOWAS Member States.
The training workshop started on November 25.
The objectives of the training workshop were: To train mentorship and coaching technics and methods to medical laboratory professionals;
To provide participants with knowledge and skills on the requirements of the ISO standards (ISO 15189:2012 and ISO 9001:2015);
To develop competency on mentorship and coaching skills; and
To build national and regional capacity to improve the quality systems of medical laboratories.