Safety is one aspect of quality: It minimizes the risk of injuries, infection and

other dangers related to laboratory service delivery.

Potential threats to health workers involved in malaria diagnosis

Direct contact with blood/body fluids

Accidental inoculation of infected blood/body fluids

Accidental cuts with the contaminated sharps

Indirect contact with contaminated equipment or any other objects

Bio safety procedures

Adequate facilities: The laboratory should have adequate facilities,

necessary equipment for undertaking the tests and following
laboratory safety.

General laboratory specifications

adequate space should be assigned for a particular laboratory

work for the
safe functioning.

laboratory tables should be stable, impervious to water and

resistant
to disinfectants, chemicals and moderate heat.

hand-washing basins, with running water, should be provided in

each
laboratory room. A dependable supply of good quality water is
Laboratory working place

All tables must be kept clean, tidy and dry.

Work surfaces must be decontaminated at the end of the working day.

All chemicals, solutions and specimens must be properly labelled. Labels must include
name, date prepared and expiry date, where applicable.

Glassware and other materials for reuse must be rinsed properly with water after cleaning
with detergent.

Supplies and materials must be kept in designated drawers and lockers that are labeled
with respective contents on the outside.

Heavy equipment, glassware and chemicals are not to be stored above eye level.

All equipments must be properly attached to electrical points in a way that prevents
overloading and tripping hazards.

Safety system should preferably have fire safety and electrical back up facilities for
emergencies. All laboratory personnel should be trained for required awareness to use the
facility in emergency.
Standard work precautions in a laboratory are:

Hand washing

Barrier protection

Safe laboratory practices

Safe handling of sharps

Management of accidental spill of blood

Bio-safety management:

Effective sterilization and disinfection

Quality Assurance System
 Microscopy remains the gold standard in malaria
diagnosis.

If the laboratory diagnosis is unreliable, the malaria

case management will be poor.

Therefore, quality assurance of malaria microscopy

services is essential for early diagnosis and prompt
treatment of malaria cases
Some of the problems observed in field conditions
Only thick smear was made. But if both thick and thin were
prepared, then thin smear was not stained.

No correct shape, size of smear.

Wrong placement of smears.

Some had only traces of smear (washed out during washing)

Overlapping of RBC in thin smear

No clear and complete labeling some had no labeling.

Use of diamond pencil or marker for labeling

Slides were found very dirty, mostly acidic, fixed and partially
dehaemoglobilized hence were not readable.
Laboratory requirements