Quackery, a major headache —Raheem

National president, Association of Medical Laboratory Scientists of Nigeria (AMLSN), Alhaji Toyosi Raheem.

THE core challenges as medical laboratory scientists

IN the past few years, we have some challenges really inhibiting the maximum delivery of healthcare services to the people, especially medical laboratory services. One of such challenges is the proliferation of substandard equipment and reagents in the country; because Nigeria’s borders are so porous, all sorts of equipment and reagents are imported, and this is not allowing for quality healthcare delivery, especially in the medical laboratory services; it is not allowing for accurate results and thus translating into poor treatment of patients.

Second, for almost two years, the governing boards of the various regulatory bodies in the health sector, especially that of the Medical Laboratory Science Council of Nigeria and some other health regulatory bodies have been dissolved and never reconstituted by the government of the day.

That has really encouraged quackery and professional malpractice, because the governing board of various health regulatory bodies are supposed to formulate policies and set standards that will promote or enhance quality laboratory services. The Medical Laboratory Science Council of Nigeria is a council that is statutorily charged to ensure that policies and strategies that will promote quality laboratory services in the country are formulated and ensured that they are implemented. But since the dissolution of the governing councils of these regulatory bodies, such policies are lacking; so this is a big challenge.

We have always said that the governing board or regulatory board of bodies in health sector should not be treated as other boards that could be dissolved at will, because medical laboratory practice is a regulated practice and not like any other practice that any person can dabble into. Once the governing board of these regulatory bodies are not in place, quackery and malpractice will go unabated. That is a great challenge. We have on several times, written to President Muhammadu Buhari, and even the Vice President, Professor Osibajo was acting, we drew the attention of the government to the need to institute the governing boards of the medical laboratory science of Nigeria and other health regulatory bodies. They did a few of them. Others have not been done. Medical Laboratory Science of Nigeria, Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria, Pharmaceutical Council of Nigeria and Physiotherapy Council of Nigeria, and so on were never reconstituted. This is not allowing for quality healthcare service in Nigeria.

Third is the inter-professional rivalry within the health sector, especially medical laboratory services, we see some people that are not medical laboratory scientists that want to be doing the work of medical laboratory scientists. This is something the government has never tried to address. We have met severally with the government that the laws of the land must be obeyed by everybody. Some others want to take up the functions of medical laboratory scientists. In some cases, when this could not be resolved by the government, we went to court and in not less than six of the court cases, judgement is in favour of medical laboratory scientists. Unfortunately, judgements were never obeyed, and that is promoting impunity and lawlessness in the country. That should not be allowed in the incoming year. These are some of the challenges we feel government is not paying attention to and all these are promoting medical tourism and people that are even not having enough resources to go outside Nigeria to take treatment now patronise orthodox medicine and self medication. So these are having a kind of threat on the health of the people.

Secondly, there is the need for us to ensure that the invitro laboratory of the Medical Laboratory Science Council of Nigeria that is expected to evaluate and assess quality of laboratory reagents and equipments being marketed in Nigeria, are empowered to do the work as it should be. By the Act that sets up medical laboratory science practice in the country, reagents and equipment that are for medical laboratory diagnosis are supposed to be evaluated and assessed and pronounced to be suitable for us in Nigeria before they are used for medical laboratory testing. That is why there are so many inter-laboratory variations of results which are not supposed to be. So, the invitro diagnostic laboratory, which is set up by the Medical Laboratory Science council of Nigeria, located in Yaba, Lagos, should be encouraged to do these assessment and evaluation of reagents and equipment.