The NHLS services 85 percent of the South African population, meets world wide standards and has highly skilled staff.

Pillay said the spin-off thus far has been the general strengthening of systems for laboratory services in general: data entry and reporting, quality assurance, analytical standardisation, service mapping and logistics.

It also is able to reach rural areas and offers a high quality service at low cost.

With at least one million people in South Africa on ARVs, the labs are kept busy. In 2010, 69 CD4 laboratories nationally carried out 3.5 million CD4 tests.

Pillay said 70 percent of TB patients are co-infected with HIV. Last year, over 4.7 million TB microscopy smears were conducted in 244 microscopy centres nationally.

The NHLS has established five labs to test for drug resistant strains of HIV, and according to Pillay, this service is going to need to expand in coming years.

Pillay said their national priority programme therefore focuses on HIV, TB and cervical cancer services.

The NHLS will continue to find ways to reduce overall health care costs, find more money for research and training of more pathologists.