The World Health Organization’s Regional Office for Africa (WHO AFRO) has established a framework for improving the quality of public health laboratories in developing countries to achieve ISO 15189 standards. This framework, implemented by ASLM in Africa, is the Stepwise Laboratory Quality Improvement Process Towards Accreditation (SLIPTA) programme.

In accordance with WHO’s core functions of setting standards and building institutional capacity, WHOAFRO has established the Stepwise Laboratory (Quality) Improvement Process Towards Accreditation (SLIPTA) to strengthen laboratory systems of its Member States.

It is a process that enables laboratories to develop and document their ability to detect, identify, and promptly report all diseases of public health significance that may be present in clinical specimens.

Through standardised processes, SLIPTA measures and evaluates the progress of laboratory systems towards international accreditation and awards a certificate of recognition (0-5 star ratings). SLIPTA enables laboratories to develop their quality management systems in order to produce timely, reliable and accurate laboratory results.

There SLIPTA is a framework of auditing developed in line with the ISO 15189:2007 Standards and to a certain extent with the 12 Quality System Essentials of the CLSI Laboratory Quality Management System Guidelines. It is used to measure and evaluate the progress of laboratory quality system and award a certificate of recognition (five star levels). It can be used at baseline, during supervision, and for monitoring and evaluation of laboratory progress towards accreditation.