Investing in laboratory services is key

With the increasing occurrence of both infectious and non-communicable diseases, the global health systems are under high demand for well-equipped laboratories with highly qualified personnel. 

 Emerging diseases such as Covid-19 and re-emerging diseases such as Ebola, HIV/Aids and Marburg require swift advancement in medical science to fasten the process of prevention, detection, surveillance and control.
 Successful disease and patient management requires well established laboratories employing qualified medical laboratory personnel.

 About 70 to 80 per cent of decisions to effective and successful treatment and management of patients are based on results from laboratory investigations.
Additionally, to cope with scientific advancement in management of diseases, there is need for research which requires advanced laboratories. 

Vaccine development too requires advanced knowledge of molecular biology, bioinformatics and Immunology to process and develop a vaccine. 

Laboratory services have been essential with the current Covid-19 pandemic. Whenever, there  is a suspected case of Covid- 19, it’s a laboratory personnel who collects the sample, transport it to the laboratory, process and analyse it using sophisticated  equipment and interprets  the results.

Notably, we are  in an era of antimicrobial resistance where most drugs no longer successfully treat a number of infections.  For most infectious diseases caused by bacteria, it is the laboratory personnel to determine which drug works best by carrying out a drug susceptibility test in the laboratory. 

Basing on this result,  the doctor can prescribe the best drug for efficient and successful treatment of the patient. 
However, it is disconsolate the way this very important medical laboratory professionals do their work with limited motivation and recognition. 

Since late 1990s, Uganda has had thousands of graduates in the medical laboratory profession  but it’s unfortunate that for long these highly skilled human resource have never been appropriately absorbed and utilised in the public service.  

Majority are being employed and paid as diploma holders except for those working with   few research laboratories and non-government organisations. 

Surprisingly, even the intellectuals misuse the designations for medical laboratory cadres where everyone generalises all laboratory professionals as laboratory technicians irrespective of their qualifications. 

In 2019, the Public Service approved the scheme of service for medical laboratory cadre but it has not been  implemented yet  it requires immediate and selfless attention to see it being observed and practiced at all levels applicable. 

Uganda indubitably has the desired highly qualified laboratory personnel with various expertise that can contribute towards the advancement of Uganda’s laboratory science. 

There is dire need to promote and motivate laboratory professionals as well as establishment of more well equipped and accredited laboratories or upgrading the available laboratories with capacity to provide advanced laboratory services.

Laboratory scientists have proven to be very instrumental in the safety of Ugandans and the world over during the scourge of Covid-19 pandemic as every effort to curtail the spread of the deadly virus rotated around accurate and precise laboratory results.

Richard Nkusa works at Medical Laboratory Society of Uganda.