The Ministries of Health and Finance are finalizing processes to offer specific employment to some graduate medical lab technicians assisting with COVID-19 testing.
This measure is to motivate lab technicians helping in the fight against COVID-19.
Professor William Ampofo, the Head of the Virology Department at the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research, made this known on Thursday, July 9, 2020.
“We’ve looked at enhancing manpower specific COVID-19 testing and I am happy to announce that the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Finance are looking at coming with a scheme to offer specific employment to some of our young graduates working at Noguchi and KCCR and of course in some of the other centres so we can have a dedicated team who will continue to provide laboratory testing of COVID-19.”
Employ qualified unemployed professionals to help with COVID-19 testing
The Ghana Association of Medical Laboratory Scientists (GAMLS) had earlier called on the government to employ qualified professionals to help in the testing of the COVID-19 cases in the labs.
“We also call for the provision of required Personal Protective Equipment (PPEs) for routine use and COVID-19 patient testing. As a matter of urgency, government should get qualified but unemployed professionals to come and support in the facilities.”
GAMLS also called on government to make functional the over one hundred GeneXpert machines that can aid in sample testing of COVID-19.
The association in the statement asked: “Why is there silence on the use of the GeneXpert (TB testing machine which can be adapted to test for COVID-19) available in a minimum of 100 Clinical Laboratories in Ghana? What is holding government from facilitating the procurement of reagents (cartridges) that could enable COVID-19 testing and produce results in 45 minutes using the GeneXpert equipment?”