Laboratory training on liquid culture and drug susceptibility testing of TB

Two years ago, in February 2008, Dr. Akos Somoskövi (FIND) and Dr. Linda Parsons (US CDC) were invited to participate in a review of the WHO TB culture and drug susceptibility testing (DST) draft training materials that were under development. The format of the course consisted of many power-point lectures, descriptive texts and standard operating procedures for a large number of methodologies, both past and current. The review of these draft materials was held at the National TB Reference Lab in Bangkok, a WHO Supranational Lab (SRL) serving four countries in Southeast Asia. The invited reviewers included two TB laboratory scientists from the Italian WHO TB SRL (who had been funded by WHO to write the materials), eight TB laboratory staff from India, Indonesia and Thailand, two WHO staff and the representatives from FIND and CDC. Following the review of the materials, WHO agreed that the draft materials could be used as a basis for developing a more laboratory, hands-on oriented two week practical course which would be given at the African Center for Integrated Laboratory Training (ACILT) in Johannesburg, focusing on methods that were appropriate for TB labs in resource-poor African countries with high burdens of TB and HIV.

With extensive support from several partners, the two week course has been presented three times, so far, at ACILT – in October 2008, and in March and October 2009. Thirty-five participants from eight countries attended the courses - Nigeria (7), Ethiopia (6), Zambia (5), Botswana (2), Kenya (1), Lesotho (1), Namibia (1), and South Africa (12). In addition, the organizers continue to communicate with previous participants to ensure that follow-up mentoring in their home laboratory is on-going, either actively through CDC/FIND staff or in collaboration with international partners. Because of the critical need for TB laboratory strengthening in high-burden countries, the course will be presented at ACILT three times in 2010 - in March, May and October.

Ongoing progress

In early 2010, FIND, together with CDC’s International Laboratory Branch of the Global AIDS Program and the National Tuberculosis Reference Laboratory (NTRL), Bangkok, Thailand organized a 10 day training on detection, identification and DST of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. The training, using ACILT materials with added modules on DST, was also supported by CDC Thailand and Becton Dickinson and was held between 11 and 22 January 2010 at the NTRL in Bangkok. The specific objective of this workshop was to train young TB laboratory scientists and technicians to perform and interpret quality assured liquid culture, species identification, and DST for the detection of TB and multidrug-resistant (MDR) TB. The training curriculum consisted of state of the art lectures in the mornings followed by extensive hands-on practice sessions and lessons on several topics concerning quality assured laboratory practices.