Gaborone, 27 April 2021: Ministry of Health and Wellness (MoHW) through the National Health Laboratory (NHL) in collaboration with the World Health Organization (WHO) country office, conducted on 30-31 March and 12-16 April two training sessions on quality improvement programmes for the staff working at the National Health Laboratory. The programme is financially supported by the EU Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid (ECHO) project on COVID-19 response. Split into two cohorts of 74 and 30, the staff represented the NHL SARS-CoV-2 Testing laboratory, Histopathology and Cytology, National Blood Transfusion Services and National Tuberculosis Reference laboratories in different districts. 
When giving welcome remarks the acting head of National Health Laboratory, Dr Madisa Mine indicated that the training is important as it ensures the staff are knowledgeable about safety rules in the working environment and can prevent Laboratory Acquired Infections (LAI). The main objective of the initiative was to orient and sensitize the staff on the basic Quality Management System, Biosafety, Biosecurity, Infection Prevention and Control practices. Specifically, the training aimed at equipping support staff with knowledge and skills on fire safety and precautions, how to manage spills in their workplace,  how Biosafety Cabinets work, how to manage infectious waste and how to perform decontamination of surfaces.
In her opening remarks the WHO Country Representative, Dr Josephine Namboze urged participants for their full and active participation and acknowledged the NHL management for identifying the need for training the support staff. 
MOHW has implemented several interventions in response to the outbreak of which one of the interventions has been to increase and decentralize testing capacity to reducing the results waiting time. Laboratory testing has been identified as one of the major interventions that need focus when responding to the COVID-19 outbreak. Due to the pressure on MOHW to increase testing capacity, many support staff were recruited to support in sample collection, sorting, data management, equipment maintenance, decontamination, and waste management.
During the awarding of completion certificates, Dr Namboze thanked both the participants and the facilitators for the commitment throughout the training and urged the teams to pass the knowledge to more of their colleagues who did not have the opportunity of being trained. The NHL Manager, Ms Onthatile Ntshambiwa in his closing remarks appreciated the support from WHO facilitators. Similar training is expected to be conducted in other districts and possibly to be repeated annually to refresh the teams in this area of work.