As a direct consequence of the implementation decision at Rosario, Argentina, the Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO) has now identified 19 new laboratories in Central and South America for SEDRI-LIMS deployment! These include hospitals in Honduras, Nicaragua, Cuba, St Lucia, Ecuador, Suriname and Uruguay. PAHO has been a strong supporter of the SEDRI-LIMS program from the outset, having attended our first global stakeholder meeting in April 2021 at which we demo'd the first version of the system to a large assembly of interested parties from the AMR global community (and quickly realized the extent of need!). This soon led to pilot sites in Argentina and Dominica, helping us to conclude phase I of the program. Since then, Marcelo Galas, Technical Officer for AMR Surveillance at PAHO has kept a close eye on progress, all the while identifying areas of greatest need across the region. Now the system is considered sufficiently mature, we have been given a green light for the next wave!
While this is a huge undertaking, we are fully up for the challenge and welcome the opportunity for SEDRI-LIMS to fulfil its potential across the region. The initial focus is likely to be on Uruguay and Honduras; Uruguay because they have a very comprehensive national reference laboratory with support for a range of testing disciplines beyond just microbiology, and Honduras because it has a cluster of laboratories with similar requirements. Fernando Airasca of Rosario will be helping us out in Uruguay and has already begun this process with a presentation of SEDRI-LIMS and his own experiences of it in Argentina. We are huge fans of Fernando and are thrilled to have his help with this new engagement! Another challenge will be the scarcity of computer equipment in some of the regions. However, a big part of the original SEDRI-LIMS requirement was that it needed to serve environments where technical resources and expertise were limited to non-existent and we have already had to deal with such scenarios in other regions.
Stay tuned for updates as we progress with this one...
Article first published: 20/08/24