LNSP Bulletin No. 13, January-June 2020
- Records the LNSP as, up to that quarter, the only laboratory in Haiti with the capacity to perform the COVID-19 test, and states its readiness to train other national laboratories to reinforce the ministry.
- Places the laboratory inside the government's scientific commission for the pandemic response, so its testing monopoly came with an advisory role.
- Records the ministry drafting a quality plan and a training plan to implement two strategic axes identified in Haiti's National Laboratory Policy, aimed at delivering quality services through competent and motivated staff in appropriate premises with adapted equipment and quality inputs to established national norms.
- Reports a study across five sites from 2016 to 2018 covering 3,028 cases in total, with results including an 84 percent figure and a 2.6 percent figure that served as the basis for decisions by the authorities.
- Records the last annual meeting of the SPHaïtiLab International Steering Committee as held on 18 and 19 March, which situates the bulletin's reporting period precisely.
- Is a semi-annual bulletin for January to June 2020, so it captures the laboratory system at the moment national testing capacity rested on a single institution.
Issue 13 of the bulletin of the Laboratoire National de Santé Publique covers the first half of 2020, the period in which COVID-19 reached Haiti. The director's editorial makes the argument that frames the issue: the pandemic showed how devastating outbreaks of infectious disease can be for health, the economy, politics and society worldwide; no country was spared and no country is fully prepared for the next epidemic; the concept of global health security takes on its full meaning once it becomes clear that no country can seal itself off or fully protect itself from an emerging epidemic. On that basis the issue treats the role of the laboratory network in managing epidemics and health emergencies. The bulletin is the LNSP's own periodical record and one of the few Haitian sources on national laboratory capacity, which is the binding constraint behind much of the country's disease surveillance.
How to cite
Ministry of Public Health and Population (MSPP), LNSP Bulletin No. 13, January-June 2020, https://oldwebsite.mspp.gouv.ht/wp-content/uploads/Bulletin-du-LNSP-13-Janvier-%C3%A0-Juin-2020.pdf