‘Embrace Laboratory Quality Management Systems’
The Ghana Association of Biomedical Laboratory Scientists (GABMLS) has called on the management of public and private hospitals to, as a matter of urgency, embrace Laboratory Quality Management Systems (LQMS ) by setting aside funds that will be used to fund laboratory equipment and logistics.
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Such funds, according to the GABMLS, would also be used for the procurement of reagents for uninterrupted quality laboratory services to enhance quality healthcare.
Communique
In a communique signed and issued by the President and General Secretary of the association Messrs Ignatius A. N. Awinibuno and Michael Amo Omari respectively, the association expressed concern over the lack of implementation of a national policy that would strengthen medical laboratory systems in Ghana.
The communique, issued at the end of the 2016 annual national congress held at Winneba in the Central Region, was on the theme: “Medical laboratory services: Key to public health and safety.
The communique said the country was full of under-resourced clinical and public health laboratory facilities, making basic diagnostic tests unavailable to many patients.
Such situations, it noted, had grave repercussions on the quality of healthcare and undermined the epidemic preparedness of the country, and posed a threat to health and security.
It urged the sector Ministry to upgrade and build the capacity of the National and Regional Public Health Reference laboratories, as a matter of urgency, to enable them to be in a position to detect any epidemic outbreak, including Ebola, early enough for prompt management, surveillance and effective disease control.
“The lack of implementation of a national policy for strengthening medical laboratory systems and ensuring quality laboratory services in the interest of the people of Ghana, cannot be tolerated any longer by the medical laboratory profession and citizens in Ghana,” the communique stated.
It said it was equally important for the Ministry of Health to provide effective and efficient laboratory facilities in all health facilities in the country to make quality healthcare delivery attainable and sustainable .
It expressed concern over the lack of dedicated budget and absence of a directorate for medical laboratory services at the Ministry, the Ghana Health Service and teaching hospitals, saying “ the lack of dedicated budget “undermines the effective and efficient delivery of quality medical laboratory services in the country, as per the ISO 15189 requirements.”
National policies
On the policies that regulate their operations, the communique stressed the need for the Ministry of Health “to launch and implement the National Health Laboratory , National Health Laboratory Accreditation and the National Health Laboratory Strategic policies as a matter of priority”.
On the Single Spine Salary Structure (SSSS), the GABMLS said it was important for the Fair Wages and Salaries Commission (FWSC) to immediately align all cadres of medical laboratory scientists, including the medical laboratory technicians, the medical laboratory assistant and all grades of the biomedical laboratory scientists, who had been wrongly placed, with respect to analogous groups, on the SSSS.