How Strategic Collaborations Led to Laboratory Accreditation in Rural Uganda
The USAID Regional Health Integration to Enhance Services in Eastern Uganda Activity (RHITES-E), led by IntraHealth International, supports the government of Uganda to expand access to and use of high-quality health services across 25 districts in Eastern Uganda and Karamoja region. This case illustrates the collaboration, learning and adaptation (CLA) road-map RHITES-E followed to accelerate Laboratory Quality Management Systems (LQMS) improvement to attain laboratory accreditation(South African National Accreditation System-SANAF) for one lab in eastern Uganda. Due to CLA-informed efforts, Tororo laboratory became the first USAID supported facility in Uganda to receive international ISO 15189 standard accreditation, and the fifth government supported accredited facility. The success in accreditation of Tororo lab is a key example for how the CLA process can be applied to other settings and other labs to garner more accreditations.