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Department of Laboratory Medicine, University Hospital Ghent, Belgium

Candidates for AACC Offices

Mary Haven, Chair of AACC’s 2004 Nominating Committee, has announced the following slate of candidates for this year’s AACC election.

President-Elect:

• Gary L. Myers, PhD
  
• John E. Sherwin, PhD
  

Secretary:

• D. Robert Dufour, MD
  
• Robert L. Murray, JD, PhD
  

Board of Directors:

• Edward R. Ashwood, MD
  
• J. Rex Astles, PhD
  
• Catherine A. Hammett-Stabler, PhD
  
• Steven H. Wong, PhD
  

Nominating Committee:

• Joseph D. Artiss, PhD
  
• Amitava Dasgupta, PhD
  
• Elizabeth L. Frank, PhD
  
• Michael J. Hallworth, MSc
  
• Carol R. Lee, MS
  
• Elia M. Mears, MS
  

AACC is updating members’ e-mail addresses in preparation for use of the Internet for the 2004 AACC election. Members can update information by logging onto AACC Direct (https://www.aaccdirect.org/CustomerService/AACCprofile.aspx) and making changes there, or by e-mailing updated information to edavis{at}aacc.org.

Clinical Chemistry in Rwanda

We recently learned of the teaching experiences of Joris Delanghe and Jan Philippé in Rwanda, and asked for more information. Following is their account.

The densely populated country of Rwanda (an estimated 8 128 000 people on only 11 000 square miles) has enormous healthcare needs. At the present time, this war-torn country has only about 300 medical doctors, or 1 doctor for every 27 000 people. Medical education is provided at the National University of Rwanda (NUR) located in the city of Butare in Southwestern Rwanda. In addition, the studies of laboratory technology attract many young people.

In March 2004, we had the opportunity to teach a course on clinical chemistry to the medical faculty of the NUR, and we were able to view the country’s clinical laboratory infrastructure. The laboratory of the University Hospital (300 beds) has only one chemistry analyzer and one hematology analyzer. The latter was not operational at the time of our visit because no reagents were available. Counting of cells and measuring of hemoglobin and hematocrit were done by hand. The clinical chemistry laboratory offers 40 tests. Many basic reagents (for glucose, creatinine, and total protein) are prepared within the laboratory. Other reagents must be obtained from abroad, with resulting long delays for delivery; these reagents are two to three times as expensive as those available in Europe or the United States. Lack of technical service for the few available instruments is a major burden for the laboratory manager and a continuous threat to the continuity of the laboratory’s activity. No computer is available.

The country currently has only a few active laboratory managers with university degrees. One of them, Prof. Justine Wane, is a full-time staff member in the field of clinical chemistry at the University Hospital. He and his colleagues find it difficult to keep up to date because recent scientific journals or books related to laboratory medicine are not available. The WHO provides online access to several key medical journals, but unfortunately most laboratory medicine journals do not fall into this category. [Editor’s Note: Clinical Chemistry is available without charge on the Internet in Rwanda as it is in >30 other developing countries. The countries in which it is available free are listed the May 2004 "The Clinical Chemist" (Clin Chem 2004;50:983–4), available at http://www.clinchem.org/cgi/content/full/50/5/983.]

The challenges in Rwanda are far from unique in Africa. Rwanda’s clinical laboratories are unable to fulfill the needs of the country in the face of major healthcare problems, including HIV, malaria, and malnutrition. There is, however, hope for improvement as 100 students finish their medical studies every year at the national university.

View larger version (19K): [in this window] [in a new window]   Figure 1. Ex Libris, Victor Oliva Pascuet. Reprinted with permission from Il Laboratorio Nell’ex Libris. © 2003 by Gian Carlo Torre.

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