In December, Tom and I (Matt) travelled from Cambodia to Cape Town for the bi-annual conference of the African Society for Laboratory Medicine (ASLM) at the Cape Town International Convention Centre (CTICC). I'm happy to say we managed to sleep on the flight as we were co-hosting a SEDRI-LIMS seminar with Janet Midega (Wellcome) at 7am on the first day! Despite a shaky start as delegates struggled to find the conference room at such an early hour, we ended up with a solid crowd and some excellent participation, including from Dr Watipaso Kasambara (ASLM), Matthew McCarroll (APHL), Patrick Royale (Global Fund) and Professor Iruka N. Okeke.
The enormous Cape Town International Convention Centre (CTICC) and Janet Midega :-)
That evening, as we watched the "table cloth" roll over Table Mountain from a nearby restaurant, having also visited Angkor Wat (Cambodia) and Singapore harbour within the previous 24 hours, Tom and I reflected on a successful day!
Dinner backdrop!
Throughout the remainder of the conference, we attended various AMR presentations, including from Professor Oladipo Aboderin of OAUTHC in Nigeria, who was giving an account of his experiences with our system and told his audience that SEDRI-LIMS was "a microbiologist's dream!" That was very nice to hear! We also met with various other stakeholders, such as the APHL, Africa CDC (who had an interesting request for integration with their Network Information Management System - a continent wide specimen broker), ASLM leadership (including Dr Talkmore Maruta and Dr Watipaso Kasambara), Malawi MoH (Collins Mitambo and Dzine Maziya), Ghana MoH and Tapiwanashe Kujinga from Zimbabwe. Malawi MoH in particular were looking to install SEDRI-LIMS in their reference laboratory before making it available to all sentinel labs for evaluation.
It truly was an exhilarating few days, but we certainly have our work cut out following up on the resulting opportunities in the new year!
Article first published: 09/12/23