Recent Events
WHO, Global Consultation on Universal Access to Safe Blood Transfusion
NRL Collaborating with the Canadian Society for International Health
PhD Defence in Stockholm
Forging links in the UK
WHO, Global Consultation on Universal Access to Safe Blood Transfusion
An informal consultation on Universal Access to Safe Blood Transfusion was held in Ottowa, Canada from 9th to 11th June. The consultation was organised by WHO Essential Technologies to coincide with World Donor Day. There were a large number of those involved in transfusion safety from at least 50 countries. There were two notable quotes that I recorded:-
NRL has been a WHO Collaborating Centre since 1985 and is responsible for the quality assurance of blood borne virus testing in many blood services. This meeting was another opportunity to network further with some of those involved in NRL's quality programmes. Elizabeth Dax participated in a break out group which discussed "Ensuring 100% Quality Assured Testing of Donated Blood for Transfusion-Transmissible Infectiouns and Blood Group Serology." The recommendations to WHO (please note they are still in draft ) were:-
- Poor solutions for poor facilities or people are not acceptable either nationally or internationally.
- Safety is doubt - monitoring the doubt is quality assurance.
1. Promote and support the implementation of WHO guidelines on the screening of donated blood for transfusion-transmissible infections (TTI).
2. Support the development of national reference centres for blood transfusion services.
3. Facilitate the provision of external quality assessment for screening for blood group serology and TTIs and advocate and support the establishment of national external quality assessment schemes.
4. Develop global and regional mechanisms for the evaluation of blood group serology and TTI test kits and reagents and promote the establishment of national evaluation mechanisms.
NRL Collaborating with the Canadian Society for International Health
NRL is collaborating in a project managed and funded by the Canadian Government through the Canadian International Development Agency. The present project is titled "Positive Children Project in Ukraine". Elizabeth Dax and Wayne Dimech participated in a week-long course within this project which was designed to bring information to the 100 or so participants about coordination between areas of health care including the use of laboratories. NRL has been assisting in developing the laboratory side of the project and introducing participants from the laboratory area to quality assurance and the use of quality controls and EDCNet. Elizabeth Dax delivered a plenary address on laboratory systems and introduced the laboratory-based group to testing strategies. Wayne Dimech spent the rest of the week with the group explaining about QC and EDCNet in the context of quality assurance.
PhD Defence in Stockholm
Elizabeth Dax was the opponent for a PhD thesis defence in Stockholm at the Karolinska Institute. She also presented a seminar entitled "Excitement in Quality Assurance! Challenges in Blood-borne Virus Testing, Internationally".
Forging links in the UK
On 18 and 19 July, Elizabeth Dax and Scott Read visited the Evaluations and Standards Laboratory (ESL) of the Health Protection Agency (HPA) (Colindale, North London) and by invitation, the National Institute for Biological Standards and Control (NIBSC) (Potter's Bar, Hertfordshire). At the HPA we met with several staff working in the different divisions that make up the ESL. With John Parry (HPA Reference Laboratory) we discussed hepatitis B testing strategies in the UK. Laura Dean and Keith Perry of the Microbiological Diagnostics Assessment Service (MiDAS), offered advice and insight into evaluation processes in the UK, particularly for hepatitis B tests. We also met with Vivienne James, Director of the United Kingdom National External Quality Assessment Service (UK NEQAS) for Microbiology.
The theme that developed during all our meetings at the HPA was that both the NRL and HPA face similar challenges and have many common interests. During a meeting with Valerie Bevan (Director, ESL) and Joe Vincini (Head, Quality Control Reagents Unit) Liz was invited to return to HPA in early September to give a talk about the NRL. At NIBSC Liz and Scott were hosted by Harvey Holmes, Division of Retrovirology. Harvey introduced us to many people that are performing an interesting variety of studies that may prompt collaborations between the NRL and the NIBSC in the future. We are excited that Clare Morris (Division of Retrovirology) plans to attend the NRL Workshop in October. Clare hopes to present to us some of the work that NIBSC has been doing, and in which NRL has played a small part. We were privileged to meet with Dr Stephen Inglis (Director, NIBSC) who explained to us that the HPA and the NIBSC will be united under a common administration in future. We were asked to give a presentation about the NRL and Scott and Liz gave a talk jointly, entitled "An Introduction to the NRL in 2006". We look forward to our visit consolidating the dialogue and possible collaborations between these UK groups and the NRL.
