Diagnosing Ebola – a day in the life of a diagnostics lab in Sierra Leone

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Thu, 2015-02-26 16:20 — mike kraft

Professor Ian Goodfellow describes an average day in an Ebola diagnostics lab, and challenges the team faced in setting it up, Courtesy of the Wells Trust Blog

BIOMED CENTRAL by Ian Goodfellow Feb. 25, 2015

During the first two weeks in Makeni, Sierra Leone, our focus was very much on getting the Ebola diagnostics lab operational as fast as possible. There was a real lack of diagnostic capacity in this area of the country the lab facility needed to go live prior to the opening of the treatment center.

The Ebola diagnostic lab team. Ian Goodfellow

With no existing diagnostics facility, all samples were being driven (or sometimes flown on a UN helicopter) to a Center of Disease Control (CDC) lab based in Bo. They were fantastic, but although they had a very quick turnaround time for testing samples, the logistics of physically getting the samples to them meant the process was slowed down significantly. Creating a diagnostic facility in this area was key to speeding up diagnoses.

Opening a molecular diagnostic lab in the conditions we faced was not straightforward. There was a lot of waiting around for deliveries of equipment, loading the kit by hand and then shifting boxes around the camp....

When the diagnostic lab opened, the rota was set up to stagger the number of people in lab, making sure we could cover the 6am-10pm opening times. Team members would start their shifts at 6am, 8am, 11am and 2pm, with the late shift staying until everything had been completed. A typical shift lasted around eight hours.

Read complete article:

http://blogs.biomedcentral.com/on-health/2015/02/25/diagnosing-ebola-day-life-diagnostics-lab-sierra-leone/

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