Ethiopian National Tuberculosis Reference Laboratory Ten Year External Quality Assurance-Panel Test Performance Review

The Objective of this review was to see the ten year EQA performance trend from 2005 till 2014 at Ethiopian national tuberculosis Reference laboratory. The finding shows that 81.3% and 11.2%of participation were ZN-AFB and of phenotypic DST respectively. The remaining participation was for LPA-PT with proportion of 4.6% and 2.3% for GeneXpert. Most of EQA-PT performance of NTRL scored above 80% and above 90% for Phenotypic DST of 1st and 2 nd line Anti-TB drug. DST efficiency reveal that most tested drugs at NTRL were achieved acceptable performance and good agreement result compared to SRLN laboratory test with record data of above 90% for all 1 st line and 2 nd line drugs with the exception of Ethambutol. Over all TAT record were acceptable with the exception of phenotypic DST which is Critical TAT findings that ranges from 100 to 841 days from total 4 round 1 ST and 2 nd line DST -PT participation With the median TAT of 205 days. The most frequently committed error type were High false Negative, which accounts 3% contribution for total loss of PT score. The review finding shows there were some gaps on Critical TAT therefore a periodic review and evidence based corrective action has to be made in short time interval after feedback obtained since laboratory error will have devastating impact on clinical management of Patients and laboratory information.