Abstract:
In the last decade, Ethiopia has achieved numerous public health successes to improve health care
system for the provision of quality services; there are several gaps and challenges which are not
addressed as well. Most of the laboratories in the health care system including the National
Reference Laboratories function in facilities with sub-optimum infrastructures, poor safety
working environment, shortage of equipment and equipment maintenance centers, sustainable
supplies and storage interruption, bio-bank centers to stores leftover specimens and huge gaps in
the implementation of Laboratory Quality Management System. The Ethiopian Public Health
Institute (EPHI) is one such institution, and a close look at its practices can help other central
institutions promote public health through integration with national laboratory systems. One part
of EPHI’s mission is to lead the national public laboratory system. In addition the tiered system
includes 13 regional reference laboratories, 300 hospital laboratories, and about 3,700 health
centre laboratories but their facilities are, generally, inadequate for the scope of services proposed
by the project and quality varies significantly among them. To tackle these problems, the
government of Ethiopia plans to construct the proposed multipurpose building with the objective
to elevate the capacity and status of the institute by establishment of a Proficiency Testing System
and panel production for standard quality assurance, Bio-bank Centre for reference materials of all
sorts, central warehouse to serve as logistics supply hub and laboratory equipment maintenance
center to provide maintenance and calibration services for laboratory medical equipment and
sustainable laboratory services without interruption of the services
