Strategic Framework for Strengthening Health Laboratory Services in the COVID-19 Pandemic in Iran.

Background & Objective: Providing equitable access to good quality, timely, and affordable laboratory testing has always been a top priority for the Ministry of Health and Medical Education (MoH-ME) and the Reference Health Laboratory (RHL). Considering the significant role of medical laboratories in disease surveillance, RHL developed a strategic plan to manage laboratory services during the COVID-19 pandemic based on the "Strategic Framework for strengthening health laboratory services, 2016-2020" proposed by the World Health Organization (WHO). This article describes the steps taken to establish the strategic framework in Iran.

Assessing the prevalence of in infertile male patients in Tabriz, northwest Iran.

Background: is an infrequent, but one of the most successful bacteria that associated with infertility and are able to spermatozoa immobilization and agglutination.

Objective: The aim of present study was to determine the frequency of in semen obtained from infertile male patients in northwest Iran.

Materials And Methods: Seminal fluids of 100 infertile men were evaluated.

Challenges of implementing Iranian national laboratory standards.

After four years of publishing the Iranian National Laboratory Standard and following a strategic plan to implement its requirements, it was decided to review the taken actions, evaluating the achievements and the failures, as well as analyzing the gaps and planning the interventional activities to resolve the problems. A thorough evaluation revealed that the progress of implementation process varies considerably in different provinces, as well as in laboratories in different public and private sectors. Diversity and heterogeneousity of laboratories throughout the country is one of unresolvable problems.

Quality assurance program for molecular medicine laboratories.

Background: Molecular diagnostic methods have played and continuing to have a critical role in clinical laboratories in recent years. Therefore, standardization is an evolutionary process that needs to be upgrade with increasing scientific knowledge, improvement of the instruments and techniques. The aim of this study was to design a quality assurance program in order to have similar conditions for all medical laboratories engaging with molecular tests.

Establishment of national laboratory standards in public and private hospital laboratories.

In September 2007 national standard manual was finalized and officially announced as the minimal quality requirements for all medical laboratories in the country. Apart from auditing laboratories, Reference Health Laboratory has performed benchmarking auditing of medical laboratory network (surveys) in provinces. 12(th) benchmarks performed in Tehran and Alborz provinces, Iran in 2010 in three stages.