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This article from the Therapeutics Research Program, Division of AIDS (DAIDS; part of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health) talks about the most common laboratory issues faced when trying to carry out clinical research in resource-limited settings, as well as about some possible solutions. Such problems include, among others, irregularities in laboratory consistency due to poor quality management; inappropriate laboratory facilities (space, equipment, reagents and consumables); lack of proper staff training, equipment maintenance, well-written standard operating procedures (SOPs) and laboratory capacity; shipping delays for kits and reagents and inadequate data management.
To help address these issues, the DAIDS has developed a Good Clinical Laboratory Practice document that can be useful for any type of clinical research laboratory in resource-limited settings (www.daidscrss.com/LaboratoryManagementCenter/Pages/GCLP_Standards.aspx). They have also put in place a Patient Safety Monitoring in International Laboratories (pSMILE) website (www.pSMILE.org), which public portion is an open resource with a great amount of information on laboratory Quality Management available to any laboratory worldwide.
To read the full open access article, published on the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes (JAIDS), click on the following link:
This resource was originally posted in Global Health Laboratories.