A new 15-man taskforce comprising Civil Defence, Army, Police and State Security Service is to begin a clampdown on substandard laboratories and diagnostic equipment across the country.
The taskforce, inaugurated by the Medical Laboratory Science Council of Nigeria, will target some 13,000 unapproved labs nationwide, according to the council’s registrar Anthony Emeribe.
It will inspect lab services, personnel, equipment, and practice, according to standards set along the lines a checklist by the World Health Organisation.
The council is concerned that only about 3,000 registered labs are duly approved, of which only 2,622 of them had been inspected and 1,448 sealed.
“People think laboratory services are what you can just get into and start rendering. And that’s why we have so many poor results,” he explained at the inauguration of the taskforce in Abuja.
Emeribe spoke of an urgent need to monitor, inspect and sanitise all tiers of the laboratory system, including 13,000 unapproved labs, to ensure that results emanating from them are accurate, reliable and reproducible.
The taskforce will also check services labs claim to offer against staff strength, reporting lines, layout and equipment, at the same time demand product description, conformity and manufacturer’s evidence and stringent review of claims by manufacturers or their agents of diagnostic equipment and in-vitro diagnostic tools.
“Once you can’t give us scientific evidence for your machine, it is not acceptable. This is not one area where you say you are practising traditional or alternative medicine. It is even more [dangerous] because then you are the one doing the testing, prescribing and referring,” Emeribe said.
