APLAC congratulates SAC, Singapore on its excellent arrangements for a most successful group of APLAC 2008 meetings held in Singapore on 6-12 December 2008.
Congratulations also to ACLASS (USA) whose scope of recognition under the APLAC MRA was extended to include accreditation of Reference Material Producers (RMPs), and to NABL (India) whose scope of recognition under the MRA was extended to include accreditation of medical laboratories to ISO 15189.
During the APLAC General Assembly Terence Chan of HKAS (Hong Kong China) was re-elected for a further 2 years as APLAC Chair and Barry Ashcroft of IANZ (New Zealand) was re-elected as Chair of the APLAC MRA Council; Regina Robertson (NATA, Australia), Roxanne Robinson (A2LA, USA) and Vu Xuan Thuy (BoA, Vietnam) were elected to the 3 vacant positions on the APLAC Board of Management. Four new committee Chairs were also elected: Zhang Mingxia (CNAS, China) - Training Committee; Trace McInturff (A2LA, USA) - Technical Committee; Alan Patterson (NATA, Australia) - Public Information Committee; Dan Tholen (A2LA, USA) - Proficiency Testing Committee.
APLAC also sadly bid farewell to two valued colleagues who had contributed much to APLAC over many years: Tony Russell (previously of NATA, Australia) who has retired, and Wei Hao (CNAS, China) who has moved to a new position within the Chinese technical infrastructure.
APLAC 2009 will be held in Bali, Indonesia on 5-11 December 2009.