Position: LABORATORY QUALITY COORDINATOR
Terms of reference
Introduction
Malawi is among high TB/HIV burden country with annual TB co-infection rate of more than 46% over the past several years with HIV remains the most important risk factor for developing active TB disease. Malawi has made significant an improvement in term of TB expansion of TB care and prevention services across the country. The Global fund support through NFM I and NFMII grants take a lion share in the expansion of TB diagnostic services and building the capacity of HCWs. Currently the three are 392 health frailties providing microscopy services, and more than 81 GeneXpert sites and 3 culture and DST laboratories in the country.
In Malawi GeneXpert is the primary diagnostic test for all key and vulnerable populations (KVP), which account for nearly half of all presumptive TB patients nationally. All pulmonary TB cases are also eligible for full culture and first line DST. Full culture and DST are done at National and Regional reference laboratories. The country has been experiencing a low DR-TB notification compared to the estimated cases over the past several years. The low DR-TB detection is mainly due to low coverage in Drug Sensitivity Testing (DST)which is at 31% among all notified TB cases. Limited diagnostic coverage for GeneXpert, sub-optimal sample transportation system and low index of suspicion by Health Care Workers (HCWs) to identify presumptive DR-TB patients are some of the factors that contributed to the lower DR-TB detection. The national TB control and leprosy control program would like to improve the capacity at National and Regional culture laboratories through capacity building and technical support. As part of capacity building, the program would like to strengthen the human resource capacity at NTRL by hiring fulltime highly qualified laboratory Quality Coordinator at NTRL on contract basis.
The following are duties and responsibilities for the post:
Major Duties and Responsibilities
As the person in charge of ensuring results of the highest quality, the Lab Quality Coordinator creates systems to monitor data quality and performance. He/she is expected to confirm that procedures adhere to safety and compliance rules and regulations. The quality Coordinator is responsible to conduct testing in timely manner, personally reviewing any abnormal results to find out the root cause of the irregularity and troubleshoot.
Under direct supervision of NTRL Manager, the Lab Quality Coordinator will discharge the following duties and responsibilities:
