From benchmarking to best practices: Lessons from the laboratory quality improvement programme at the military teaching hospital in Cotonou, Benin.

Background: In 2015, the Army Teaching Hospital-University Teaching Hospital (HIA-CHU []) laboratory in Benin launched a quality improvement programme in alignment with the World Health Organization Regional Office for Africa's Stepwise Laboratory Improvement Process Towards Accreditation (SLIPTA). Among the sub-Saharan African laboratories that have used SLIPTA, few have been francophone countries, and fewer have belonged to a military health system. The purpose of this article was to outline the strategy, implementation, outcomes and military-specific challenges of the HIA-CHU laboratory quality improvement programme from 2015 to 2018.