Chioma Umeha
As the date of the 2018 edition of the African
Society for Laboratory Medicine Conference (ASLM) draws near, the body has
released the list of speakers who will address the attending delegates.
The list includes: Senior Director of the
Diagnostic Services at the Clinton Health Access Initiative, Dr. Trevor Peter;
Director of African Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. John
Nkengasong; Founder and Director of the International Centre for AIDS Care and
Treatment Programs (ICAP), Dr. Waafa El Sadr, and South Africa’s National
Health Laboratory Service official, Dr. Wendy Stevens.
Other speakers who will be facilitating on-going
dialogues at ASLM 2018 include: Prof. Alimuddin Zumla, Dr. Caroline
Jehu-Appiah, Dr. Ogobara Doumbo, Dr. Rebecca Martin, Dr. Chewe Luo and Prof.
Oyewale Tomori. Also included in the speaker line-up are Dr. Jay Varma, Dr.
Philip Onyebujoh, Dr. Merawi Aragaw, Dr. Chikwe Ihekweazu, Dr. Abdourahmane
Sow, Dr. Djoudalbaye Benjamin and Prof. Iruka Okeke.
The conference will be chaired by co-founder and
the Executive Director of the International Research Centre of Excellence at
the Institute of Human Virology Nigeria, Prof. Alash’le Abimiku. She is a
Professor at the Institute of Human Virology at the University of Maryland
School of Medicine, Baltimore.
The theme for this year’s conference is
‘Preventing and Controlling the Next Pandemic: The Role of the
Laboratory’. From December 10 to
13, 2018, Transcorp Hilton Hotel, Abuja, Nigeria, will play host to hundreds of
delegates from across Africa. This
is the first time the conference will be held outside Cape Town, South Africa,
where the first three editions were staged.
The 2018 ASLM conference will feature plenary
sessions on pandemic threats, laboratory response and partnership synergy. The
event will also feature presentations, poster sessions, special sessions and
symposia. The Roundtable discussions will focus on topics such as leveraging
and sustaining networks for disease response in Africa; data intelligence,
biological specimen repository for outbreak response, role of National public
health institutes in pandemic response and Africa regional laboratory networks.
Commenting on the speaker line-up, Prof. Abimiku
said: “This year’s set of speakers were specially chosen because of how
passionate they are about changing the narrative around public health
laboratories. They are experts and professionals who have left indelible
footprints in their various health fields. Participants who attend the event
will be exposed to modern collaborative techniques in the field of laboratory
science.”
This year’s edition of the biennial conference,
which is the fourth, is expected to help achieve the ASLM’s 2020 goals of
strengthening laboratory workforce by training and certifying laboratory
professionals and clinicians.
The ASLM aims to achieve these goals by working
collaboratively with governments, local and international organisations,
implementing partners and the private sector.
According to Ms. Bethanie Rammer, Communications
Manager, ASLM, the conference provides an avenue for strong collaborations with
leading researchers; which in turn paves the way for the development of new
strategies and medical technologies.
Speaking on the rationale for hosting the ASLM
conference in Nigeria, she said: “By hosting conferences such as ASLM 2018 in
Abuja – Nigeria, ASLM seeks to change the way that medical research is conducted.
