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LABORATORY SERVICES

LABORATORY SERVICES

A laboratory staff of the molecular virology laboratory in Jos, scanning samples for HIV Viral Load tests that supports HIV care and treatments in Nigeria.

ABOUT US

About Our Laboratory Services

We are building laboratory infrastructure and promoting good laboratory practice for quality diagnosis of diseases in Nigeria and West Africa.

To provide the needed support for patient management, we provide structural upgrade, equipment and reagent supplies to health facilities we support. IHVN also ensures that personnel capacity is built through various trainings, and laboratory commodities are supplied regularly.

One of the services that IHVN has excelled in is supporting health facilities to provide HIV diagnosis for infants. IHVN has established 17 PCR laboratories and is currently overseeing five with automated capacity. They all support the National Infant Virological Testing programs and viral load testing.

IHVN also provided technical support and infrastructural upgrade (high through put automated systems for Real-Time Unbaised Pathogen Detection) for the establishment of a National Reference Laboratory in Gaduwa, Abuja, with funding from PEPFAR, through CDC.

This support to the National Reference Laboratory included procurement and installation of laboratory equipment and training and mentoring of laboratory personnel working at the biorepository/sample archiving laboratory.

At the National Reference Laboratory, IHVN has also set up and is managing a functional Mega laboratory for viral load and Infant Virological Testing. We are also supporting the process of getting the mega laboratory accredited to ISO 151 189

We established a Bio-Safety Level 3 Laboratory for diagnosis of Multi-Drug Resistant TB at the National TB Leprosy Training Center in Zaria in collaboration with the National Tuberculosis Leprosy Control Program (NTBLTCP) for TB diagnostic services. The laboratory supports the surveillance for drug-resistant tuberculosis. With support from the Global Fund, eight TB reference laboratories have also upgraded and activated.

The Institute oversees the activities at a network of three biorepositories in Abuja, Jos and Zaria all equipped to promote safe handling, receipt, processing, storage, inventory control, packaging and distribution of biological specimens, tissues and isolates (TB) with the goals of supporting research activities,  public health evaluation studies, clinical trials and HIV associated malignant studies.

We also support laboratories to implement and maintain a Quality Assurance/Quality Improvement Program. This includes continuous monitoring, establishing both internal and external quality assessment programs (proficiency testing, audits, retesting), capacity building and laboratory accreditation.  Plateau State Human Virology Research Center (PLASVIREC) laboratory achieved ISO 15189 in recognition of its international standard in 2018 while in 2019, National Quality Assessment Laboratory (NEQAL) Saye – Zaria, a Medical Laboratory Science Council of Nigeria facility, supported by IHVN has achieved ISO 17043 International accreditation, the first of its kind in West Africa.

IHVN has continuously supported blood safety in Nigeria in collaboration with the National Blood Transfusion Service(NBTS). We promote voluntary donor recruitment and blood screening against transfusion transmissible infections of HIV, syphilis, Hepatitis B and C.