The Registrar of the Allied Health Professions Council at the Ministry of Health, Dr. Samuel Yaw Opoku has intimated that the government is committed at ensuring that proper standards are practiced in the Health sector.
He said this on the backdrop of calls by the Ghana Association of Medical Laboratory scientists for the implementation of the National Health Laboratory policy.
The policy was drafted between 2010 and 2013.
The Association has questioned why the government has not implemented the policy which they believe will ensure access to universal health care by all.
The Registrar of the Council, Dr. Yaw Samuel Yaw Opoku has said the Ministry will examine the policy and if need be ensure its implementation.
“The Ministry is also interested in having well-functioning lab services in the country and as much as this policy which aims at improving the laboratory service in Ghana. I want to believe that it should be implemented very soon when some concrete areas have been resolved both by the Ministry and the professional body because I can report that two weeks ago, one of the highest meetings of the Ministry was held and this issue came up when the Ministry decided to set up a small team to look into,” he said.
Background
The Ghana Association of medical laboratory scientists called for the immediate implementation of the National Health Laboratory policy which was drafted between 2010 and 2013.
On Tuesday, 3rd March 2020, at a stakeholder forum in Accra, the President for the association, Dr. Ignatius Awinibuno said the implementation of the policy will ensure standardization which is a prerequisite for achieving the goal of access to universal and quality health care.
“The purpose of the national laboratory policy is to bring organization to the laboratory services in Ghana to look at the health service systems now. It is fragmented and not coordinated so the part of what the policy seeks to address is to provide a central point of direction and also make provision for infrastructural equipment for the laboratories,” he said.
The policy is to improve the quality of preventive, promotive, and curative health care in Ghana by guiding the expansion of laboratory services in support of health care programs.
But successive governments have failed to implement the policy.