African Strategies for Advancing Pathology

Pathology plays a critical role in guiding clinical decisions about patient diagnosis and treatment. It also is an essential tool in screening and disease prevention programs that contributes to the overall health and well being of communities. Inadequate pathology services result in ineffective treatment programs due to delayed or inaccurate diagnoses, which affect patient care directly and lead to erroneous estimates of disease rates. The latter results in a compromised ability for health care systems to plan for resource allocation, which in turn results in poorer clinical outcomes. In 2014, twenty-seven professionals with a common interest in increasing and improving access to diagnostic pathology and laboratory medicine in Africa formed African Strategies for Advancing Pathology (ASAP). This organization is composed of individuals with expertise and interest in histopathology, cytopathology, medical microbiology, infectious disease pathology, information management, public health advocacy and policy, health systems, laboratory management, and process improvement. Their common goal is to increase and improve access to diagnostic pathology and laboratory services in low and middle income countries (LMICs).