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Medical laboratories in Plateau not equipped – expert

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An expert, Mr Solomon Chollom, has disclosed that 90 per cent of the medical laboratories in Plateau were not equipped to play their role in the healthcare delivery chain.

Chollom, Chairman, Association of Medical Laboratory Scientist of Nigeria (AMLSN), National Veterinary Research Institute, Jos chapter, who spoke on Thursday in Jos, regretted that the development was “a major drawback to quality healthcare”.

His position was contained in a paper entitled: “Emerging and re-emerging infectious disease in Nigeria,’’ delivered at a public lecture organised in honour of late Raphael Shonekan, the first medical laboratory scientist of the institute.

He said that “only 10 per cent” of laboratories were well endowed while the rest, especially medical laboratories in local government health centres and cottage hospitals were “very under-equipped”.

Chollom described a medical laboratory as “the loud voice that speaks on health”.

“The laboratory remains the voice that speaks; without that voice, the medical laboratory scientist is handicapped and cannot determine what is wrong to help the physician to decide.

“The good laboratory must have the equipment that indicates what pathogen, parasites, virus or bacteria is responsible for an ailment and how such ailment can be tackled.

“The quality of a medical laboratory’s output depends on its input. The inputs are the samples, reagents and equipment. This greatly affects the quality of the lab’s result.

“If you bring samples to a lab that lacks the right equipment to work with, most often we do manual investigation and it delays the treatment hour.

“This affects the turnaround time for each procedure; in the course of that delay, so many things could happen to the sample.

“There are samples that need to be treated within 30 minutes while some require five minutes, depending on the pathogen one is looking for.

“If at the point of reception, some of the samples are already getting deteriorated, the integrity of the outcome of such investigation could be compromised,” he explained.

Chollom said that some equipment were particularly crucial to the 21st century medical laboratories, but lamented that such equipment were not available in most laboratories in the Plateau.

He called on governments and concerned stakeholders to equip medical laboratories in its primary, secondary and tertiary health institutions to boost the quality of healthcare facilities and personnel handling them.

“ With good laboratories and good handlers, we shall minimise medical tourism,” he said.

Chollom particularly stressed the need to upgrade medical laboratories in veterinary centres to help biosafety and contain highly contagious organisms.

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