26 Dec 2020
World Health Organisation programs train people and build capacity globally
World Health Organization (WHO) centres and laboratories based at the Doherty Institute are part of the global effort to enhance capabilities related to infectious diseases.
The Doherty Institute is home to three WHO Collaborating Centres and three WHO Regional Reference Laboratories. Each of these WHO-designated centres and laboratories have an important role to play in training and capacity building in the countries and regions they serve.
For influenza, the WHO relies on designated National Influenza Centres (NIC) across the globe to collect virus specimens and perform preliminary analyses. These data ultimately determine the composition of the seasonal flu vaccine for the Northern and Southern Hemispheres.
“In recent years, isolating and characterising some subtypes of influenza has become challenging using our standard laboratory tests,” says Professor Patrick Reading, an Educator for the WHO Collaborating Centre for Reference and Research on Influenza.
“This prompted the Centre to develop initiatives to support and enhance the capabilities of the NICs in the Asia-Pacific region to generate and analyse viral isolates.”
In late 2016, the Centre developed and organised an External Quality Assessment (EQA) program with the WHO Regional Offices for the Western Pacific and South-East Asia. The EQA tested the capacity of NICs in these regions and was followed by a weeklong workshop the following May held at the Doherty Institute.
The EQA program has expanded to include NICs in the WHO Africa Region, Americas Region and Eastern Mediterranean Region and is now coordinated by the Doherty Institute based Centre together with WHO Headquarters in Geneva.
The Centre regularly hosts staff from NICs and public health laboratories around the world for training in aspects of influenza detection and characterisation. In addition, Centre staff also travel to provide in-house training within overseas NIC laboratories.
As another example of global impact, the WHO Regional Measles and Rubella Reference Laboratory at the Doherty Institute also works to build capacity to fight measles. The Laboratory ran a workshop on the development of national proficiency testing schemes and the performance of measles enzyme immunoassays in May 2019. The objective of the workshop was to sustain the quality of measles and rubella laboratory networks in countries with multiple laboratories, including India, Indonesia and Thailand.
This article was first published in the Celebrating Five Years of the Doherty Institute Impact Report.