DPRK

Summary of activities by year

2017

6-16 May: An International Joint Monitoring Mission was coordinated by WHO to provide on site review of the National Tuberculosis Control Programme. An SRL colleague participated in the mission focusing on issues related to laboratory testing. 

27-28 July: An SRL colleague attended a WHO meeting in Geneva to contribute to protocol development for a national anti-TB drug resistance survey. 

2016

25 July – 5 August: On-site technical support to the National Tuberculosis Reference Laboratory (NRL) by two Supranational Reference Laboratory (SRL) colleagues, focusing on second-line drug susceptibility testing (DST) and laboratory quality system

2015

4-29 May: On-site technical support to the NRL by an SRL colleague, focusing on first-line DST and laboratory quality system

3-28 August: training at SRL for 3 NRL colleagues on rapid molecular methods and DST for M. tuberculosis

21 September – 16 October: training at SRL for 3 NRL colleagues on rapid molecular methods and DST for M. tuberculosis

2014

9 - 16 May: In an International Joint Monitoring Mission coordinated by WHO to review the National Tuberculosis Control Programme, an SRL colleague participated, focusing on laboratory testing and quality assurance

July - December: SRL received 100 suspected multi-drug resistant M. tuberculosis isolates from NRL to evaluate concordance of phenotypic and genotypic first- and second-line DST results 

October: Provision of WHO Proficiency Testing Panel Round 20 by SRL to the NRL