This is the first edition of the National Medical Equipment Guidelines produced by the MoH, coordinated by NACME and HID. These guidelines cover the broad spectrum of the equipment lifecycle including acquisition of equipment through Donation, safety of equipment, users, and patients, decommissioning and disposal of equipment. Emphasis has been placed on ensuring that acquisition of equipment is based on planning and needs assessment that establishes; need, availability of human resource, infrastructure and utilities to ensure full utilization of equipment.
The second issue of the Lab Digest is here! This issue takes you through the evolution of the Central Public Health Laboratory from a one room provisional space to the magnificent home in Butabika. Did you know that this great institution/ department started off with one specialist? Catch this and more in our one on one with the Commissioner, National Health Laboratories and Diagnostic Services, Dr. Susan Nabadda.
The underlying philosophy and rationale of this policy is that health laboratory services are essential for the delivery of quality health care and should be made available to all the people of Uganda. Poor health laboratory services subject patients to inappropriate treatments, chronic ill-health, high out-of-pocket expenditures on health care, loss of incomes and ultimately loss of confidence in health services. Moreover, poor laboratory services are also costly in terms of high wastage of scarce public resources on ineffective treatments, loss of economic productivity of the population due to chronic illness and loss of life.
The National Health Laboratory Strategic Plan (NHLSP) provides a national framework to guide investments in laboratory services by the Government of Uganda and Health Development partners. It aims to strengthen coordination, implementation and management of the services and ensure that they are transparent and responsive to the country’s health needs.
The Apapai Health Centre IV laboratory in Serere district, Eastern Uganda, is busy today with ten patients waiting to have their lab tests taken. The laboratory technician, Samuel Oule, is confident that he has enough of the right laboratory supplies to run tests for all the patients he will see today, a welcome change from 12 months ago when he would have had to turn some patients away because he lacked one or more of the laboratory supplies needed.
Welcome to the first issue of The Lab Digest, a quarterly newsletter that brings you updates and insights from the world of laboratory and diagnostics, a brainchild of the department of National Health Laboratory and Diagnostic Services of the Ministry of Health.
We are deeply delighted to have made it this far, and we can only pledge better in our subsequent issues. Special appreciation to the editorial team and the National Health Laboratory and Diagnostic Services Management.
The Project Developmental Objective of EAPHLNP is to establish a network of efficient, high quality and accessible public health laboratories for diagnosis and surveillance of tuberculosis and other communicable diseases in the East African region.
Mbarara Regional Referral Hospital is home to one of seven of Uganda’s public health satellite laboratories under the World Bank-funded EAPHLN Project. The hospital, commonly known as Mbarara Hospital is situated in the heart of Mbarara Municipality and is a hub for health services for the locals.
Since the publication of the first edition of Part 2 District Laboratory Practice in Tropical Countries in 2000, the work of many district laboratories continues to be dominated by the on-going HIV/AIDS pandemic, increases in the prevalence of tuberculosis and other HIV-related infections and more recently, the requirement for laboratory monitoring of antiretroviral therapy.
