to Strengthening Disease Surveillance: The RESAOLAB Project in West Africa

ufficient laboratory capacity is essential to effective infectious disease surveillance and control. This is recognized in the current International Health Regulations (IHR), which identify laboratory services as a category of core capacities that all the World Health Organization (WHO) Member States are expected to develop and maintain (1). IHR Core Capacity 8 requires laboratory services for every phase of real-time event management (i.e., detection, investigation, and response), with sample analysis being performed either domestically or through collaboration centers (2). Laboratory services are considered a key component of national health systems, with the Integrated Disease Surveillance and Response (IDSR) utilizing the struc-tures, processes and personnel of national clinical labora-tory services for disease surveillance. However, laboratory services for both patient care and disease surveillance remain among the most neglected components of the overall health system in resource-poor countries. Chal-lenges include lack of national laboratory policy and strategic planning, insufficient numbers of trained pro-fessionals, poor laboratory infrastructures, and absence of quality management systems (3). Thus, several calls have been put forth to improve laboratory capacity in resource-poor countries. In 2008, representatives of African governments, local and inter-national partners participated in a consensus meeting on clinical laboratory in Maputo, Mozambique. Meeting participants called on national governments to develop national laboratory policies and to provide laboratory support for diseases of public health importance; and they called on donors and development partners to commit to work collaboratively with each other and with coordination from national governments t