Expanding Sequencing Training Across the Americas

In 2024, Honduras, with support from APHL, strengthened its national laboratory sequencing capacity.

Today, the initiative continues to grow.

Honduran laboratory scientists, in partnership with APHL and with funding from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC’s) Global Health Security Partnerships, recently held a sequencing training in Panama for Central and South American countries. It was the first time a Latin American country co-led a regional training alongside APHL, and the first time partners in Honduras helped lead a training under an international trainer-of-trainers (ToTs) model.

A look back

In August 2022, a new project, supported by the Pan American Health Organization and coordinated by Dr. Gabriela Rodriquez Segura, the genomics laboratory coordinator at Honduras’ Laboratorio Nacional de Vigilancia de la Salud (LNVS), created a sequencing space at the laboratory in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

LNVS sent Drs. Soany Avilez and Karla Romero, two of their scientists specializing in genomics, to the Gorgas Memorial Institute, a medical training institute in Panama, for training in bioinformatics and genomic sequencing. Avilez and Romero subsequently became the first two scientists in Honduras capable of performing SARS-CoV-2 sequencing.

In 2024, APHL supported the doctors in holding a two-week sequencing workshop for laboratory professionals from a variety of backgrounds to learn sequencing skills, followed by a local ToTs session to their LNVS colleagues.

Moving beyond COVID

In December 2025, Avilez and Romero expanded their teaching repertoire to lead, for the first time, a larger-scale regional ToTs program in Panama. With continued support from the Gorgas Institute, APHL and CDC, 17 participants from 14 different countries completed and received a ToT certification in sequencing.

The training represented the first time APHL worked with many countries in the region, including Ecuador, Peru, El Salvador and Belize. Held fully in Spanish, this training allowed several participants to sequence bacteria for the first time using Salmonella spp., a leading cause of foodborne illness worldwide.

“Genetic sequencing is not only useful for identifying viruses like SARS-CoV-2,” explained APHL’s Adolfo Lara, PhD, specialist, Global Health, who was involved in the trainings. “It’s also useful for detecting the genetic fingerprint of bacteria. Sequencing Samonella seemed like a logical next step in the training.”

Designed and delivered by Avilez and Romero through a combination of in-person and remote sessions, the training included an overview of using visualization tools to look at relationships between samples, a mock Salmonella spp. outbreak analysis and instruction on how to use Terra.bio (a platform that allows scientists to upload and access data, run analysis and collaborate with one another).

Expanding reach

Since the training, both Paraguay and Chile have led their own ToT sessions. The hope is that all participating countries will do this eventually, creating a new network for local training and skill building in the region.

“Regional capacity is important,” Lara said. “We are connected as the Americas. Being able to provide support to partner countries allows them to have these tools and knowledge in place to catch infectious diseases, identify them and conduct surveillance so that they’re easier to keep under control at the local, regional and global level. It’s a benefit to us all when we have systems in place to catch pandemic-risk infectious diseases.”