Drafting of the framework document during a workshop in Togo.
This framework document defines strategic and operational outlines for mentoring and benchmarking programs, incorporating the requirements of the quality management system (QMS), biological techniques and the principles of biosafety and biosecurity. It will serve as a national reference to guide laboratories in the continuous improvement of their practices, in line with the ISO 15189 standard adopted in 2015 in Togo, and within a One Health approach.
The validation workshop, consisting of plenary sessions and group work, brought together around 50 key players in the sector, including medical biologists, teaching and research staff, representatives of health institutions, and technical partners.
The unique feature of these programs is that mentors provide regular support for medical laboratories on site after they have been assessed using the SLIPTA (Stepwise Laboratory Improvement Process Towards Accreditation) checklists. An evaluation takes place at the end of the support program to measure its effectiveness using the SLIPTA star rating system.
The pilot phase of the mentoring program, launched in 2016, led to an overall improvement in mentored labs’ scores thanks to this approach. Following this success, several further programs were rolled out in 2017, 2019 and 2023 to cover a larger number of laboratories. The improvement seen in the quality of the results led the Laboratories Department (DL) to formally adopt and extend this strategy to reinforce staff technical skills on site in the laboratories.
As well as mentoring, Togo offers a benchmarking program, which involves identifying and implementing best practices developed by the mentored laboratories in a cost-effective manner, in order to support smaller laboratories in the health regions where each “central” mentored laboratory is located and include them in this improvement process. The drafting and validated of the framework document by the DL is intended to guide the implementation of this twofold program, with a view to optimizing resources.