The Ministry of Health has enjoined all federal medical centres, specialist hospitals and teaching hospitals to take advantage of the national laboratory equipment calibration centre (NaLECC) to ensure their equipment is calibrated for quality assurance and optimum performance.
The Minister of State for Health, Joseph Ekumankama, made the call on Thursday in Abuja during the presentation of the international certificate of accreditation (ISO 17025:2017 certificate) recently bagged by NaLECC to the federal government.
NaLECC is managed by the Medical Laboratory Science Council of Nigeria (MLSCN) with funding from the US-CDC and technical support from the Institute of Human Virology Nigeria (IHVN).
The minister said doing so would help the hospitals achieve the desired outcome for the patients. He noted that international certification of NaLECC would help the country save foreign exchange earnings from organisations and facilities going abroad for calibration.
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“As we continue to scale up the health system and avail many more citizens quality diagnosis and treatment, we could be saving a huge proportion of our foreign exchange earnings devoted to health tourism to other climes,” he added.
He said that it was remarkable that NaLECC which was inaugurated in March in 2020 has recorded such a milestone within a short period of existence.
Registrar of MLSCN, Dr. Tosan Erhabor, said NaLECC was set up to calibrate ancillary equipment to ensure delivery of the correct volumes of samples or analytes.
