LABORATORY SERVICES NEAR ME
The advancement of medicine and the requirements of practicing modern medicine have made laboratory services critical in the disbursement of quality medical care.
That said, it becomes important for laboratory services to be available and close to people as it, more than not impacts the quality of medical services they are prone to receive. To the extent that lab services support health workers to identify health issues that are brought to their medical facilities so that they are better placed (informed) to administer appropriate medical interventions to resolve those medical issues, having quality and yet affordable lab services near people who benefit from these services should be of paramount concern to the leadership that runs the health provision space in the nation.
LABORATORY SERVICES, WHAT ARE THEY?
There are different kinds of laboratories that serve different purposes (covered in an earlier article). Still, for the purposes of this discussion, our focus is on clinical lab services as it supports the delivery of healthcare to the general populace.
Before a doctor who is taking care of a patient would take a medical decision to apply one form of treatment or another to a patient’s reported ailment, they would first want to understand what medical situation they are dealing with. Some form of medical investigations would be requested to be carried out at the medical laboratory (which may be housed on the premises of the health facility or outsourced) upon which results the doctor would take whatever necessary medical action that could be available. Lab services are thus engaged to determine clinical diagnosis required by clinicians accurately and may include all laboratory-related services that are available (from when a request is made for one to get a test conducted at a medical laboratory: specimen collection, laboratory testing of specimen, recording of test results and delivering of results for onward decision and subsequent medical actions to be taken).
Examples of lab services may include general/special hematology (coagulative hematology, hemoglobin studies, iron studies, transfusion medicine, and enzymatic studies), clinical microbiology (bacteriology, parasitology, virology and mycology), immunology, histopathology, chemical pathology (general clinical chemistry), special chemical pathology (endocrinological studies), etc.
LABORATORY SERVICES ARE BETTER NEARER
Lab services aren’t free; it costs money – sometimes, a lot of money. The subject of cost demands is addressed in another article. Suffice it to say, however, proper healthcare provision isn’t complete without quality lab services, it must not become a headache for persons in search of healthcare solutions to find these lab services that have become critical for the promotion of good healthcare delivery. Indeed, there should be a deliberate effort to ensure that quality and yet affordable laboratory services are readily available and can easily be assessed by the growing populace who may have need of such facilities near them.
Ideally, these lab services should be found in healthcare facilities – hospitals and clinics that are patronized by the masses – making such places a one-stop shop for accessing comprehensive healthcare. In such facilities, getting lab services is made much easier and straightforward. Other times, however, the laboratory services in a particular healthcare facility may not have one laboratory service or another to offer thus necessitating that patrons look for other laboratory facilities to augment whatever service that was lacking in the first facility. Still, other health facilities have no laboratory services available at all (especially health centers in the hinterlands). Patrons of such health centers endure the unpleasant experience of trekking between the health facility (usually in suburban and rural areas) and outsourced laboratory services (that’s usually nestled in urbanized areas of the country). This situation is inconveniencing in many ways to members of such communities. Laboratory services shouldn’t be concentrated only in the cities at the neglect of persons living on the outskirts of the big cities.
BRINGING LABORATORY SERVICES NEARER
In our untiring quest to see Ghana’s healthcare system become better and better, and having a full appreciation of the role quality and reliable laboratory services play in achieving that status, SYNLAB, formerly Medlab Ghana continues to extend our laboratories services to reach more communities – the latest being Tarkwa, Goaso and two in Takoradi Effiakuma No.9 and Chapel Hill. This adds up to our Tema, Accra, Kumasi, Sunyani, and Koforidua offices. Patrons of all our facilities in the various regions are assured of quality laboratory services to cater to the diagnostic care for their individual and family needs. Medical professionals and facilities that have a need for reliable and accurate diagnostic support for their work will also find our laboratory services second to none.
Across the entire healthcare delivery landscape in Ghana, there are an estimated 500 plus medical laboratories in the public sector. There is a need for more laboratory services to be made available as the population keeps increasing and modern sedentary lifestyles make people prone to health challenges. At a recently held event that saw about twenty-one medical laboratories recognized and awarded in various categories for their dedicated laboratory services that continue to uphold the health delivery system in Ghana – especially during the Covid pandemic, it was opined that laboratory facilities/services remained inadequate and a neglected area respectively, especially in developing countries. This story needs to change. Once the narrative changes, laboratory services will be brought nearer and nearer to the ordinary citizen.
REFERENCES
http://military-medicine.com
http://graphic.com.gh
