Laboratory scientists working in a lab
Laboratory scientists working in a lab

Executive Member of the Ghana Association of Biomedical Laboratory Scientists, Michael Amo Omari, has asserted that, all medical laboratories currently across the country have not been internationally accredited.

We don’t have any laboratory either in any of the teaching hospitals, Ministry of Health or even at the Ghana Health Service or in any part of the country with international accreditation, he noted in an interview on Adom FM’s Dwaso Nsem show on Thursday.

According to him, the Ghana Association of Medical Scientists in 2011 adopted the internationally standardised medical testing procedures (ISO 15189) to be used in the laboratories across the country, but has since failed to gain international accreditation for laboratory tests conducted in laboratories across the country.

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In 2011, the association decided to adopt the medical laboratory standards used across the world and we even started teaching quality management system in our various institutions. In 2017, the Ghana Standards Board said we should localise the standards which we did, but till today we don’t use the standards we adopted, he added.  

Mr Omari’s assertion comes as a shock, leading one to question the standards currently being used in testing COVID-19 suspected cases in the Noguchi and KCCR laboratories in the country. And most importantly the validity or certainty of the test results considered to be COVID-19 positive.  

Ghana’s confirmed cases of COVID-19 on Thursday, April 30, increased by 403 new cases shooting the total number of confirmed cases to 2,074.

The number of recovered persons has also increased to 212, with one more person succumbing to the virus, pegging the nation’s death toll at 17.