Country report: the Indonesian NEQAS on hematology. National External Quality Assessment Scheme

Around six hundred clinical laboratories in all the province of Indonesia participated the Indonesian National External Quality Assessment Scheme (NEQAS) on Hematology (Program Nasional Pemantapan Kualitas Laboratorium Klinik bidang Hematologi). Automated analyzer gave better results compared to the manual method. For hemoglobin, the CV of automated analyzer and manual method were 2.8% and 9.1%, respectively. The CV of automated analyzer and manual method for leukocyte count were 8.3% and 32.3%; for erythrocyte count were 9.7% and 80.8%; and for thrombocyte count were 10.3% and 45.9%. We observe no significant improvement of the overall performance from 1986 to 1998. Quality control material for NEQAS on hematology is still a problem. The artificial particles seem not behave exactly like the human cells (leukocytes, thrombocytes).