The World Health Organization African region external quality assessment scheme for anti-HIV serology.

A regional external quality assessment scheme (REQAS) for anti-HIV serology aimed to objectively assess reliability and quality of HIV testing processes in the African region. This involved the distribution of proficiency testing (PT) panels to participating laboratories from 2002 to 2010. During the survey period, this included 16 distributions of PT panels to 49 laboratories in 30 countries, and the overall average score during the nine-year survey period was 98.

The World Health Organization African region laboratory accreditation process: improving the quality of laboratory systems in the African region.

Few developing countries have established laboratory quality standards that are affordable and easy to implement and monitor. To address this challenge, the World Health Organization Regional Office for Africa (WHO AFRO) established a stepwise approach, using a 0- to 5-star scale, to the recognition of evolving fulfillment of the ISO 15189 standard rather than pass-fail grading. Laboratories that fail to achieve an assessment score of at least 55% will not be awarded a star ranking.

First observation of HIV type 1 drug resistance mutations in Algeria.

This study demonstrates for the first time HIV-1 resistance mutations to all classes of antiretroviral drugs available in Algeria (NRTIs, NNRTIs, PIs) in treated patients at failure. Moreover, it is shown that mutations to NRTIs and PIs can be observed in untreated patients in this country where there is high HIV-1 diversity.