South Sudan faces severe health workforce shortages and lack of qualified personnel to manage health facilities at all levels. The 2009 laboratory assessment indicated that there is inadequate staffing levels and lack of qualified personnel at most laboratories. Improvement of the human resource situation would require among other things, supporting the pre-service and in-service training capacity through developing and harmonizing curricula and training materials, training of trainers, and meeting the recurrent costs of training programs. The African Society for Laboratory Medicine (ASLM) will support the MOH in enhancing the capacity of the existing health personnel through pre-service and in-service training. The objective of this implementing mechanism is to review the current MOH curriculum for training certificate and diploma holders in medical laboratory sciences, provide recommendations and produce a revised training curriculum that clearly indicates a career path for laboratory professionals. The training curricula will lead to improvement of quality of laboratory workers and quality of patient care. Being a National curriculum, it will be used by all training institutions in South Sudan that have training programs for laboratory sciences. ASLM will monitor the implementation process of the curricula in collaboration with the Directorate of human resource and professional development in the MOH.

South Sudan has three Laboratory training schools with an average output of about 50 laboratory assistants per annum. These training schools have been using the South Sudan MOH curriculum for the training laboratory assistants and technicians. The course duration for laboratory assistants is two years, leading to the award of Certificate in Medical Laboratory Sciences while the laboratory technicians are trained for three years and conferred a Diploma in Medical Laboratory Sciences. A curriculum for a Higher Diploma in medical laboratory sciences was prepared in 2005 but has not been implemented to date. Despite the availability of the curricula, implementation has not been done uniformly in the three training institutes because of perceptions that some modules are missing and others are not necessary. As a result graduates from the three training schools qualify with different levels of knowledge and understanding of laboratory concepts. Reviewing the current curricula which is more than five years old and up-dating it in line with current disease patterns, modern diagnostic techniques and training methods will support improvement of quality of laboratory personnel. ASLM will provide technical assistance to review and up-date the current pre-service curricula that will enable South Sudan to produce competent, skilled laboratory personnel. ASLM will also develop tools that the Directorate of Human Resource and Professional Development will use to monitor and evaluate the implementation process of the curriculum and measure the impact after five years.

The amount of formal laboratory training varies for staff; some have no formal laboratory training and are not licensed by the medical council while others have received only specialized training e.g. in malaria diagnosis, TB smear microscopy or detection of Trypanosomes. Bridging the gap between those who had informal training and those who are certified to practice is not possible because of the absence of training modules that would allow them to move from one recognized level to another. The same situation exists for diploma holders who would like to join a degree programme in the University. Thus filling positions for laboratory personnel that require higher qualifications remains a challenge. ASLM will develop a curriculum that will describe a career development and progression path which will allow more laboratory personnel to acquire higher qualifications.

In future, ASLM will also support in-service training for laboratory workers working at the NPHL, referral laboratories and state hospital laboratories. These trainings will be decided on in collaboration with the MOH and will support continuous professional development for laboratory staff.