Muttamba Winters, O'Hare Bernadette, Ramsay Andrew, Saxena Vibhor, Kirenga Bruce, Sabiiti Wilber
University of St Andrews, St Andrews, UK.
Makerere University Lung Institute, Kampala, Uganda.
J Glob Health. 2025 Aug 29;15:04194. doi: 10.7189/jogh.15.04194.
Laboratory systems play a crucial role in managing diseases effectively, and the COVID-19 pandemic serves as a prime example. The pandemic underscored the need to make laboratory health systems more resilient and robust to respond to future pandemics.
We conducted a desk review guided by the six World Health Organization health system building blocks (health service delivery, health financing, medical products, vaccines, and technologies, human resources for health, governance, and health information systems).
The three countries' strengths include health information systems, well-established reference laboratories, mobile and community-level testing, a vibrant private laboratory sector in Uganda and Kenya, and a growing private sector in the UK. In Uganda and Kenya, there are laboratory connectivity solutions for molecular diagnostics, multi-disease testing platforms and specimen referral systems, while in the UK, there are hub-and-spoke networks. Weaknesses in Uganda and Kenya include vertical laboratory systems strengthening, ill-equipped laboratories, constrained and inequitable distribution of laboratory human resources, and limited data use. In the UK, there is chronic underfunding and undervaluing of disciplines supporting infection testing, microbiology and virology.
The growing contribution of the private sector in the three countries and the deployment of multi-disease testing platforms should be supported, given the advantage of shared financial costs in the face of chronic underfunding for laboratory systems.
实验室系统在有效管理疾病方面发挥着关键作用，新冠疫情就是一个典型例子。疫情凸显了使实验室卫生系统更具韧性和强大能力以应对未来大流行的必要性。
我们在世界卫生组织的六个卫生系统构建要素（卫生服务提供、卫生筹资、医疗产品、疫苗和技术、卫生人力资源、治理以及卫生信息系统）的指导下进行了案头审查。
这三个国家的优势包括卫生信息系统、成熟的参考实验室、移动和社区层面的检测、乌干达和肯尼亚活跃的私营实验室部门以及英国不断发展的私营部门。在乌干达和肯尼亚，存在用于分子诊断的实验室连接解决方案、多疾病检测平台和标本转诊系统，而在英国，有轮辐式网络。乌干达和肯尼亚的劣势包括垂直实验室系统强化不足、实验室设备简陋、实验室人力资源分布受限且不均衡以及数据利用有限。在英国，支持感染检测、微生物学和病毒学的学科长期资金不足且不受重视。
鉴于实验室系统长期资金不足，私营部门在这三个国家的贡献不断增加以及多疾病检测平台的部署具有分担财务成本的优势，应予以支持。
