Training tissue bank operators: the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)/National University of Singapore (NUS) 10 years of experience.

National University of Singapore (NUS) was appointed by IAEA to become IAEA/NUS Regional Training Centre (RTC) for Asia and the Pacific region in September 1996. The Government of Singapore (represented by the Ministry of Environment) with the National Science and Technology Board as the funding agency awarded a grant of S$225,500 to build a new purpose-built tissue bank to be the Regional Training Centre. National University Hospital provided a space of 2,000 square feet for this purpose. The first Diploma Course was launched on 3 November 1997 with 17 candidates with the first NUS Diploma Examination being held in October 1998. Between November 1997 and April 2007, a total of nine courses were conducted by RTC with a total of 180 tissue bank operators, 133 from Asia and the Pacific region (13 countries including 2 from Iran), 14 from Africa (Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Egypt, South Africa and Zambia), 6 from Latin America (Brazil, Chile, Cuba, Peru and Uruguay), 9 from Europe (Greece, Slovakia, Poland, Ukraine) and 2 from Australia. The last batch (ninth batch) involved twenty students registered in April 2007 and will be due to sit for the terminal examination only in April 2008.