The SLMTA Hero Award

William Ziras Lali, National Professional Officer - Laboratory, World Health Organization, Uganda

Nominated by Philliam Aleti Aleezaibo, Public Health Specialist - Laboratory Quality Assurance Officer, CDC-Uganda

William Ziras Lali is the National Professional Officer-Laboratory (NPO/LAB) in World Health Organization country office, Kampala. Prior to that, William was the National Laboratory Quality Assurance Coordinator when Strengthening Laboratory Management Toward Accreditation (SLMTA) was piloted in Uganda in 2009. He attended SLMTA TOT in 2011 and Statistical Quality Control and Method Validation in 2013, both held in Johannesburg South Africa. He is a strong advocate of SLMTA. The following are his key national achievements.

William was instrumental in building the national capacity for implementing SLMTA. In 2014 he spearheaded the first ever in country SLMTA TOT, training 24 facilitators including 4 non-Ugandans. Working with the national focal point within MoH, he supported the restructuring of national framework for scaling up the program nationwide, dividing Uganda into 4 implementation zones, each served by a national team of SLMTA trainers.

Additionally, he successfully worked with the East African Public Health Laboratory Network (EAPHLN) and WHO (NPO/LAB) on a plan for ASLM to train 48 laboratory auditors by the end of 2016. He has mentored over 40 national quality improvement mentors to enable the national scale-up of the SLMTA programme. He consistently led biannual national laboratory quality audits, which climaxed in 2015 when ASLM conducted the first official audits in Uganda in 7 laboratories. The electronic laboratory audit database at MoH was first developed under his leadership.

Although William has joined WHO is 2014, he continues to support the national SLMTA programme by working with implementing partners. He has worked with Becton Dickinson, a public private partner, in three laboratories in Kampala to improve quality; and provided liaison with ASLM, CDC and other regional partners to support the SLIPTA activities.

With the above achievements, dedication and potential to achieve more, I hereby nominate William Ziras Lali as a SLMTA hero.