Nigeria, WHO launch National Essential Diagnostic List

The World Health Organisation has supported the Federal Government of Nigeria in launching the National Essential Diagnostics List.

The WHO list of essential diagnostic tests (EDL) is a World Health Organization priority list of medical tests that provides guidance for individual countries on which tests to use and which not to. It was first published in 2018, then revised in 2019, and a third edition was published in 2020.

The EDL aims to provide evidence-based guidance to countries to create their own national lists of essential diagnostic tests and tools, anticipating that the EDL would complement the List of Essential Medicines and enhance its impact.

Tests in community settings where there is no laboratory, are divided into general tests and tests that are disease-specific. Diseases that can be tested for in the community without laboratory facilities include: Chagas disease, cholera, COVID-19, diabetes mellitus, hepatitis B and C, HIV, influenza, malaria, Streptococcal pharyngitis, sickling disorders, syphilis, tuberculosis and visceral leishmaniasis. 

Where there is a health care facility with laboratories, tests are divided into either general tests or disease-specific tests for clinical laboratories, and disease-specific tests for blood screening laboratories. For each group of tests, the EDL specifies the test’s name, purpose, assay format and type of specimen.

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The WHO Public Health Emergency Advisor, Dr. Alexander Chimbaru, disclosed that following increased recognition of the importance of diagnostic testing in healthcare, particularly as it plays a major role in achieving Universal Health Coverage, the World Health Organisation developed an Essential Diagnostics List to address the lack of access to tests and testing services in many countries.

Chimbaru further noted the WHO Essential Diagnostic List, which was first published in 2018, was a list of recommended in-vitro diagnostics that should be available at the point of care and is intended as a guidance document for countries to create their own national list based on their local context and needs.

EDL

“The overall goal of the EDL is to improve access to testing, diagnostic capacities during the outbreak, affordability of test, regulation, and quality of the diagnostic test.”

“The National Essential Diagnostic List is anticipated to complement and enhance the impact of the Essential Medicines List, which has recorded a great improvement in availability and affordability of medicines and quality of patient management.”

In his remarks, the Minister of Health, Dr. Osagie Ehanire, said the flag-off of the dissemination of the Nigeria National Essential Diagnostics List marks another giant stride towards achieving the core mandate of the Federal Ministry of Health which is “to develop and implement policies to strengthen the national health system for effective, efficient, accessible and affordable delivery of health services in partnership with relevant stakeholders.”

Ehanire pointed out that policies and guidelines were developed to address needs and situations, adding that Nigeria was committed to attaining globally agreed Sustainable Development Goals and Universal Health Coverage.

“Over the past few years, there has been increased recognition of the importance of diagnostic testing in healthcare, and especially in achieving the goal of UHC, but until recently, there have been few strategic efforts designed to develop the evidence base on which policymakers can rationally increase and improve access to diagnostic testing.”

“To this end, after about four decades since the existence of the Essential Medicines List, WHO has seen the need to develop an Essential Diagnostics List,” he said.


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