The Art of Writing and Implementing Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for Laboratories in Low-Resource Settings: Review of Guidelines and Best Practices

For a clinical study in the European research network on better diagnosis for neglected infectious diseases (NIDIAG) project (Better Diagnosis of Neglected Infectious Diseases: www.nidiag.org), we developed Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), which we implemented in a basically equipped laboratory in a 380-bed rural hospital (“Hopital General de Reference Mosango”) in the Kwilu province in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The study aimed to improve the early diagnosis of severe and treatable infections among patients with neurological disorders and took place over a 20-month period (14/09/2012–24/05/2014) (ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: {"type":"clinical-trial","attrs":{"text":"NCT01589289","term_id":"NCT01589289"}}NCT01589289). The set of 50 SOPs (S1 Appendix), all in French, include procedures related to the inclusion and clinical management of patients with neurological disorders (n = 4), diagnostic testing (n = 33), data collection and management (n = 5), and quality assurance (n = 8).