Chioma Umeha
As the 2018 edition of the African Society for
Laboratory Medicine (ASLM) Conference
draws near, the body has provided an opportunity for intending
participants to register at the conference venue.
This means that even though registration closed on
the company’s website last week, participants who were not able to meet the
online registration deadline, now have the chance to register physically at the
venue of the conference.
The ASLM Conference, scheduled to hold from
December 10 to 13, 2018, at Transcorp
Hilton Hotel, Abuja, Nigeria, will play host to hundreds of delegates from
across Africa.
The
conference theme this year is; ‘Preventing and Controlling the Next Pandemic:
The Role of the Laboratory’. This is the first time the conference will be held
outside Cape Town, South Africa, where the first three editions were staged.
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 co-chair
of the conference is founder of Institut de Recherche en Santé, de Surveillance
Epidémiologique et de Formations (IRESSEF), Prof. Souleymane Mboup.
The conference will feature plenary, breakout and
poster sessions, culminating in an awards ceremony on the last day of the
event. 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.
Speakers at the conference include 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.
