Joe Effiong, Uyo

Medical laboratory scientists in the country have asked President Muhammadu Buhari to appoint one of them as Minister of Health.

The Association of Medical Laboratory Scientists of Nigeria (AMLSN) made the demand in the communique/press statement issued at the end of its 13th Public Health lecture series and 198th National Executive Council meeting which held between April 26-27, at Ibom Hall, Uyo, Akwa Ibom State. They told the president to appoint either a substantive minister or minister of state from the rank of medical laboratory science professionals who are qualified and have the capacity to help him reposition the Nigerian health sector.

The statement which was signed by the National Publicity Secretary of AMLSN, Dr Casmir Ifeanychukwu, specially asked the president to eschew bias in his appointment of members of his new cabinet members so as not to gloss over the inclusion of other healthcare professionals.

“We are alarmed over the state of affairs in the health sector, which border first on the training and retraining of the medical laboratory scientists across the country.

“We are particularly worried that the internship programme for fresh graduate medical laboratory scientist is still a very big challenge.  We now have many who, upon graduation, are unable to find where they can complete their mandatory one-year facility training to hone their skills for inclusion into the membership of the healthcare team.

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“The internship is the mandatory requirement for their certification and eventual qualification to practise. Unfortunately, due to the racketeering of the internship placement, countless fresh graduate medical laboratory scientists wait for years to secure placement for an internship.

“We call on Mr. President to keep faith with his promise of a centralized internship posting. It is a promise made by the government under his leadership.

“Of utmost concern to us also is the tacit embargo on the employment of medical laboratory scientists in most federal medical centers, teaching hospitals and general hospital across the country.  Not even a single medical laboratory scientist has been recruited in the numerous centers in the last 10 to 15 years.  Apparently, the challenge with the recruitment of medical laboratory scientists across the country is but a national disservice which portends disaster to the Nigerian health system. The politicization of the health care system by Nigerian doctors can be blamed for this ugly development,” the association said

The members called  on Buhari to order the replacement of retired and dead medical laboratory scientists and the immediate employment of medical laboratory scientists in federal tertiary health institutions so as to bridge the manpower deficit, arguing that in most tertiary hospitals, the medical laboratory the scientist-doctor-patient ratio has become so distorted such that professionals are frequently overwhelmed by the workload, which may lead to misdiagnosis and poor quality care service delivery.

While expressing their worry over the escalating cases of universities illegally granting admission to students into non-existent medical laboratory science programmes due to the lucrative nature of the programme, the association urged the Medical Laboratory Science Council of Nigeria to blacklist or withdraw accreditation from all such universities violating the student indexing programme.