Development of the National Public Health Laboratory Strategy

Laboratory diagnosis and characterisation of infectious agents support all other core functions in communicable disease control. Surveillance depends on accurate diagnosis and outbreak management depends on quick identification of the causative agent. Strategic decisions about potentially dangerous outbreaks, which may lead to the use of considerable resources, rely on laboratory testing results. Specialised testing helps to tailor the prevention and other outbreak response strategies. Development of a formal Strategy will ensure the long-term sustainability of National public health laboratory systems and ensure that the key needs of communicable disease concerns and management of biological agents of security concern are met into the future.

The successful organisation will be required to consider the following as part of development of the Strategy:

• Part 1 - analysis of core public health laboratory functions;

• Part 2 - development of recommendations regarding the attributes of an optimal, agile and sustainable system, specifically focussed on laboratory testing capacity and capability;

• Part 3 - in comparison to the baseline, determining what activities and resources are required to optimise the Australian system to make it sustainable i.e. describing an optimal National public health laboratory system; and

Based on the findings of the activities undertaken in Part 1-3, develop the draft National Public Health Laboratory Strategy.