Democratic Republic of the Congo


Capital    Kinshasa
Official Language French
Population 68,692,542
(2009 estimate*)
# Living with HIV/AIDS 1.2-1.6% prevalence
(2009 estimate*)
# Living with TB 430,000
(2009 estimate*)
# of Malaria Cases 6,749,112
(2009 estimate*)
*All data is courtesy of globalhealthfacts.org
Updated March 2011

DRC President webpage

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), formerly Zaire, is located in Central Africa and possesses a very short Atlantic Ocean coastline (37 km). It is bound by the Central African Republic and Sudan to the North; Congo to the West; Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, and Tanzania to the East; and Zambia and Angola to the South. DRC gained independence from Belgium in 1960.

The DRC is widely considered to be the richest country in the world regarding natural resources. Its untapped deposits of raw minerals are estimated to be worth in excess of $24 trillion USD; this is the equivalent of the gross domestic product of the United States and Europe combined.

Congolese woman / Photo Credit
 Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)

LabCap Objectives

  • Assisting DRC with their 2010 National Antenatal Clinic HIV Surveillance, and strengthen, and improve the use of protocols for specimen collection, storage, and transportation

Program Highlights

Assisting DRC with HIV Surveillance
In February 2011, a LabCap consultant worked with Congolese facilitators from the National HIV/AIDS Reference Laboratory (NHRL) to prepare a workshop where they trained medical and laboratory sero-surveillance site supervisors on proper techniques for sample collection, storage, testing, and shipment. The consultant also revised SOPs and demonstrated to the Kisangani district sero-surveillance medical officers and laboratorians how to properly use the SOPs for optimizing data and sample collection, storage, and transport. In April-May 2011, the LabCap consultant returned to DRC to complete supervision of confirmatory HIV testing at the NHRL as a continuation of support for the 2010 Antenatal Clinic (ANC) Surveillance.