Training on collection of blood for blood cultures in 9 Hospitals in Benin

As part of the FA5 program in Benin, the team of the Unit of Tropical Bacteriology (UTB), together
with the local partner LRM (Laboratoire de Référence des Mycobactéries), will install a country–
wide Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) surveillance network in Benin. During the previous DGD
program, clinical bacteriology activities were started in 2 hospitals under the supervision of ITM
and the local partner Prof. Dissou Affolabi, who is also head of the clinical bacteriology laboratory
of the University Hospital in Cotonou (Centre National Hospitalier Universitaire Hubert Koutoukou
Maga – CNHU–HKM). At the start of the FA5 program, we have installed a 3rd hospital and selected
5 additional hospitals from different regions in the country to be included in the country–wide
AMR surveillance network. In the long term, the goal is that the hospitals from the Benin AMR
surveillance network will serve as training centers for containment of AMR in their districts and in
francophone West–Africa (Benin, Burkina Faso, Guinee). This will ensure best quality laboratory
services and patient care for patients with severe bacterial infections in the more rural and remote
areas.
From 8th November until 2nd December, we have undertaken a 4–week tour of the AMR
surveillance network hospitals across Benin (tour program in annex). We started our tour in
Cotonou, to meet and train the local trainers of LRM and CNHU. From there we visited 7 hospitals:
Nikki, Bembèrèkè, Boko, Papané, Glazoué, Dassa and Abomey (see map). Our team on the road
consisted of Prof. Jan Jacobs (MD microbiologist, head of UTB, ITM), Dr. Charlotte Grootaers (MD
pediatrician, ITM) and a laboratory technician from CHNU (each technician joined for 1 week: Mr.
Crespin Gnancadja, Mme. Arielle Yansounou, Mr. Léopold Fassinou).

We thank all the partners and participants.

Blood collection

Blood culture sampling

Sampling

Surveillance bacteriology