A consultant clinical microbiologist/parasitologist, National Hospital, Abuja, Dr Kenneth Iregbu, has disclosed that over 95 per cent of the country’s laboratory reports were unreliable.
He said in an exclusive interview with LEADERSHIP in Abuja that the reports pale into insignificance when compared with set global standards.
Iregbu said that quality assurance was not a function of the amount of equipment in the laboratory, or the number of qualified personnel, rather it rests in doing things the right way, using the right equipment, the right manpower and at the appropriate time.
?He explained, “If for instance, a person is suspected of having meningitis and it is something that can kill within hours, and? a correct result arrives five days later,? it’s a useless result. Your patient would have been buried by then. So timing is of the essence. You can also give somebody, who is HIV positive, a HIV negative result and the person goes about spreading the virus and vice versa.”
?The physician insisted that quality was at the centre of laboratory processes, including documentation of every process and procedure, and pointed out that if the result was not documented, then the test had not been done.
“For somebody to say that he is 20 years old or has 20 years experience is irrelevant if he does not document what he is doing. So the laboratory is the based upon which quality medicare can be achieved and we must have it right. We have let the nation down in our own area of jurisdiction because of wrangling, but we believe the time has come for us to move forward,” he said.
On the issue of misdiagnosis which has led to several avoidable deaths in the country, the pathologist noted, “Yes I agree with you. That is why we are emphasising that we must all work together, put heads together and standardise our work so that Nigerians can have the benefit of diagnostic laboratory. In fact, any nation that does not encourage its laboratory to develop cannot have its medicine at a higher level.”
?He also decried the dearth of pathologists in the country, and disclosed that Nigeria presently has about 500 pathologists to about 160 million population.