The Republic of Botswana and the World Health Organization announced designation of the Botswana National HIV Reference Laboratory as a WHO Collaborating Centre, which will enable deeper collaboration with WHO in advancing the health and well-being of people living with HIV.
Botswana has improved its diagnostic and laboratory systems, particularly in the areas of human capacity building, health event and outbreak detection and management, reduction of the turnaround time of laboratory results, expansion of the national public health laboratory testing menus, genomic sequencing for detection of newly discovered strong signals, as well as accreditation of its laboratories for improved and quality services.
The Botswana National HIV Reference Laboratory is not only accredited to ISO 15189, but was also designated as a WHO HIV Drug resistance laboratory (WHO HIV ResNet-HIV Drug Resistance Network) in 2019. The WHO HIV drug resistance laboratory operational framework offers guidance on how WHO HIVResNet laboratories function to support national, regional and global HIV drug resistance surveillance, by providing accurate genotyping results in a standardized format in line with WHO specifications.
