Volume 29, Number 4—April 2023
Online Report
Global Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory Equipment Management and Sustainability and Implications for Pandemic Preparedness Priorities1
Jennifer N. Lasley
, Emmanuel O. Appiah, Kazunobu Kojima, and Stuart D. Blacksell
, Emmanuel O. Appiah, Kazunobu Kojima, and Stuart D. Blacksell
Table 6
Key findings and implications on capacity building policy and practices affecting sustainability for Equipment Management and Sustainability Survey conducted by World Organisation for Animal Health, 2019
| Findings |
| •Laboratory equipment has become a consumable commodity that can be readily replaced by partners in case of management challenges, instead of valuable and valued capital investments to be leveraged over time by national authorities. |
| •Laboratory equipment management is a One Health, cross-sectional, and cross-sectoral issue, often affected by a lack of coordination and overinvestment in capital resources like equipment in the laboratory sector. |
| •No equivalent study has been performed in public health or clinical laboratory settings, but equipment-related challenges, like limited local capacity and sustainable resourcing, are common to all health laboratories. |
| •High rates of uncalibrated equipment do not provide confidence in laboratory results, calling into question the intrinsic value of the testing performed and the return on investment. |
| •Poor equipment maintenance and calibration threaten safety, security, business continuity, quality, accuracy, and timeliness of results, with a measurable impact on human health, animal health, and environmental health, and, therefore, people’s livelihoods and economies. |
| •The proliferation of high-containment laboratories in locations where specialized equipment and infrastructure services are difficult or impossible to access has meant that donation recipients neither have the financial nor human capital to maintain the laboratory and its equipment, leading to inevitable engineering failures and increasing the potential for inadvertent laboratory releases of dangerous pathogens. |
| •New strategies are needed to sustain capacity built, including long-term planning, balancing investments from capital to operating expenses, and setting priorities to maintain strengthened infrastructure and capability, especially in low-resource settings, which may involve public-private partnerships, where local business and expertise are supported through subsidies, incentives, or agreements to encourage the development of local service provision and not just on in-house expertise. |
| •Partners of health laboratories must agree on more rigorous, evidence-based, best practices and standards. |
| •Demand for maintenance and calibration services across the health laboratory sector is large and should be consolidated to support local service providers by cost sharing and bulk ordering. |
| •Investment from the national government and private sector will be required in the One Health context. |
| •The waste of precious resources should be met with innovative and pragmatic solutions that focus on getting back to management basics, rational supply and demand thinking, and building coherent systems that are appropriately sized and fit for purpose. |
| •Given that challenges encountered in veterinary laboratories are described and agreed to be similar in public health laboratory settings, action aiming toward sustainable health laboratory systems in the One Health space to improve pandemic preparedness is needed. |
| •Organizations that invest in laboratory capacity building or strengthening may hold similar, although unexploited, data and could provide precise and robust measurements along these same metrics across health sectors. |
1Preliminary results from this article were presented at the Africa Society for Laboratory Medicine Virtual Conference, November 16‒18, 2021.
Page created: January 04, 2023
Page updated: March 21, 2023
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The conclusions, findings, and opinions expressed by authors contributing to this journal do not necessarily reflect the official position of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the Public Health Service, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or the authors' affiliated institutions. Use of trade names is for identification only and does not imply endorsement by any of the groups named above.