From the 14th of January to the 13th of February 2020 Essia Belarbi and Paul Pitzinger from the german ANDEMIA team visited all study sites in Côte d’Ivoire to re-train laboratory staff in bacteriological and molecular laboratory processes and to implement the enrolment of healthy controls at the different sites.
Health care workers received a refresher training in aseptic blood sampling in order to reduce contamination rates in blood culture, which was supported by a short training video, provided by ANDEMIA and the ITM Antwerp. This video can be accessed freely on the internet here and should be used by the partners to either train new personnel or to remind established health care workers on the proper techniques.
To further improve the quality of bacteriological results biologists and technicians of the bacteriology labs in Bouaké and Guiglo were trained in the use of the API®(Analytical Profile Index) system. Lastly, the implementation of healthy control enrolment was presented to all study sites. As this phase is crucial for the further analysis and interpretation of results, the protocol was discussed in detail to make sure that every site is familiar with procedures and can start enrolment.
