The President of the Guild of Medical Laboratory Directors, Prince Elochukwu Adibo has called for the involvement of private laboratories in the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS).
He made the call Sunday in Abuja during the national scientific conference of the association.
He lamented that in spite of the critical roles of laboratory services in modern health care, the involvement of the laboratory private sector is non-existent in the NHIS.
Prince Adibo called on the NHIS to urgently address the issues of direct selection of laboratories by enrollees as currently done under the COVID-19 private laboratories network, as well as poor utilization of secondary health care providers such as stand-alone medical laboratory services.
He said doing so would integrate all registered and accredited healthcare provider laboratories and facilities in the scheme.
The Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo said that the COVID-19 pandemic has reinforced the urgent need for innovation and action on vaccine manufacturing and in-vitro diagnostics in Nigeria, and across the continent.
Represented by the Director-General of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), Dr. Chikwe Ihekweazu, he said the vaccine manufacturing capacity in Nigeria would greatly impact the national response to COVID-19 and other diseases and could not be left to the government alone.
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