National Health Laboratory Services Project (NHLS) 2018-2023 is a 5-years PEPFAR-CDC funded project that aims to strengthen operations and improve quality of health laboratory services in Tanzania. The project is implemented across all regions of Tanzania mainland and Zanzibar and followed successful completion of a prior 5-year External Quality Assurance Improvement project (EQA 2012-17).MDH led establishment of the national laboratory sample referral and transport network for HIV viral load (HVL) and EID.
This system linked ART/PMTCT HFs, via the “309 hubs and 7,200 spokes” model, to the 17 regional/zonal VL testing labs in the country thereby facilitating efficient access to essential lab tests for all PLHIVs in Tanzania. MDH played a key role to facilitate the countrywide expansion of lab capacity for key diagnostic and patient monitoring tests including HVL, HIV DNA-PCR, TB-Gene Xpert, CD4, Haematology, Chemistry and ART Drug Resistance.
Along with these efforts MDH supported capacity building of lab and other relevant staff; roll-out of guidelines, SOPs, checklists and reporting tools; renovations of lab infrastructure and equipment and strengthening supply chain of essential lab reagents. To date, MDH supports directly several VL/EID labs with a capacity to process up to 2M samples annually.
Through the NHLS 2018-23 project MDH leads key national priorities in health laboratory services including: The Proficiency Testing/ EQA of HTS reaching coverage of over 8,000 Point of care testing points (POCT) countrywide; national certification of HCPs conducting HIV rapid tests; health laboratories quality improvement and international accreditation of at least 42 labs initiative countrywide; as well as supporting the National Blood Transfusion services (NBTS).