Peoples Daily, MONDAY, FEBRUARY  8, 2010, Page 26

An Assistant Professor at the University of Maryland and co-principal investigator of AIDS Care and Treatment in Nigeria (ACTION), Dr. Alash’le Abimuku is also Senior Technical Advisor, Clinical Laboratory Services, IHVN. In this interview, she said Africa lacks adequate mechanism for accurate tests, and that the current tests undertaken for tuberculosis do not detect every case of TB by Jamila Nuhu Musa.

What is your perception of medical laboratories in Africa?

One of the things actually affecting our ability to diagnose accurately, someone who is infected with diseases, is the fact that we don’t have very stringent mechanism in our laboratories to make sure that every test done is accurate like a test is supposed to be. It is a culture that is not only lacking in Nigeria, but that we insisted in our programme is that there are a lot of trained Nigerians and if we equip them with the right tools, like gloves, temperature charts, air-conditioned rooms and so on, we will be able to have proper records. This will then mean that tests are done in at the right temperature, not at 30 degrees, or something like that. If we train them and give them all these tools, then every laboratory in Africa can produce tests that are very dependable and as accurate. That is the concept we are developing in Nigeria and we are very positive that it will work.

What are the new technologies that we should expect?

There are a number of new technologies that are coming up in terms of detecting infectious diseases like malaria and TB, and even more sensitive techniques for HIV. One of the things that you have to do with those techniques is that you have got to pilot it within the settings that you have, maybe Nigeria has a certain diet that affects the tests one way or the other, usually, what we do is pilot it within the country and see if it works, then we will also develop a manual and train additional people and get additional labs so that we can detect it well. An example of that is TB, we know that the current tests that we have had in Africa from the past several years to not detect every case of TB, maybe they detect about 40 percent, at most. So for now, we are testing another technique for TB, it is not terribly expensive but it is more sensitive and we have shown it to be.