Experts reinforce that vaccination is the greatest weapon against the disease, which can also be controlled with quick and accurate diagnoses

In the last few weeks, the city of São Paulo has identified outbreaks of meningitis while other Brazilian states have also been on alert for an increase in cases. Meningitis is a dangerous inflammation of the membranes that surround the brain and spinal cord, mainly caused by bacteria, fungi and viruses.

Bacterial meningitis tends to be more serious: it leads to a significant number of deaths per year; it can cause rapidly spreading epidemics and leave sequelae in infected people.

Vaccination is still the best way to prevent meningitis. At the same time, rapid and accurate diagnosis contributes to therapeutic success and outbreak control.

The issuance of accurate reports with the identification of the infectious agent includes routines with several stages of analysis. These routines require rigorous and periodic monitoring of the processes. To support these analyses, Controllab provides solutions for laboratory quality control.

Among the solutions, we highlight the reference strains, which include some etiologic agents that cause bacterial meningitis. These strains are essential for the quality control of the inputs used in clinical diagnostic tests. They are also of great importance for the validation studies of analytical methods.

The Proficiency Testing, also known as External Control, indicates the analytical accuracy of the laboratory. The tool is efficient for evaluating the technical quality and guaranteeing the reliability of the results.