Background
Heath Security Agenda: The Global Health Security Agenda (GHSA) was launched in February 2014, to advance a world safe and secure from infectious disease threats, to bring together nations from all over the world to make new, concrete commitments, and to elevate global health security as a national leaders-level priority.
Goals
The overall goal of this conference is to promote GHSA as a veritable platform for laboratory systems strengthening, and facilitate the development of actionable strategic approaches for a coordinated sector wide medical laboratory systems strengthening efforts, from a systems perspective, that will support the development of a robust and interconnected network of laboratories that are adequately capacitated to rapidly detect, and transparently report disease outbreaks on the continent.
Abstracts of original research works, public health evaluations, and implementation science, by subject matter experts will be based on the following tracks and sub-tracks:
Track-1: Biosafety and Biosecurity Management
- Local capacity building and systems strengthening for Biosafety and Biosecurity
- Laboratory waste management systems
- Standards, procedures, and Processes
- Policies and coordination
Track-2: Medical Laboratory Quality Management Systems and Leadership
- Local capacity building
- Accreditations and certifications
- Continuous quality improvement
- Policies and standards
Track-3: Laboratory based Disease Surveillance systems
- Strategies and approaches
- Point of Care testing
- New technologies and products
- Policies, standards and coordination
Submission guidelines
Selecting a track category. Since all abstracts will be submitted online on the conference website, the track category is the general heading under which the abstract will be reviewed and later considered for presentation at the conference, if accepted. During the submission process, you will have to select the most appropriate sub-track from each track category for your abstract. Any abstract submitted in more than one track category will be rejected.
Abstract structure: All Abstracts in all tracks must be structured as follows and not have more than 350 words (total word count) including authors, affiliation, correspondence and the body of the abstract:
Background: Indicate the aim and objective of the study, the hypothesis that was tested or/and a description of the problem being evaluated.
Methods: Describe the study design, the study period, setting and location, study population, data collection and methods of analysis used.
Results: Clearly summarize the findings and/or outcomes of the study in line with the specific objectives of the study and the statistical significance (no graphs no table must be seen in the abstract).
Conclusions: Explain the significance of your findings and/or outcomes of the study for global health security in sub-Saharan Africa.
Timeline for submission of abstract: Abstract submission is now opened and closes July 31, 2019 at midnight (Nigerian Time).
Abstract notification / presentation: Lead (correspondence) authors will be contacted by email on the status/outcome of their abstract. Oral presenters will receive slides template and be required to submit their slides (maximum of 12 slides per abstract including title slide and conclusion slide. Also note that no presentation outline slide will be necessary) presentation online a week before the conference. Late submission will be rejected.