Hospital care is mainly the domain of physicians who have been trained to assess the
signs and symptoms presented by patients and to determine the most likely cause
of their ill health. If the doctor is clear enough about what case situation is
about based on the guidelines of clinical care, then a remedy is prescribed to
the patient. The second option to the physician is to request for a number of
physical parameters, laboratory tests and medical images to be taken to
strengthen the recommendation for the appropriate remedies. Often these routine
laboratory tests, which are designed in a plug-and-play fashion, are not too
technically challenging. This way anyone with diploma or bachelor’s level
training in laboratory techniques is able to conduct these tests routinely. In
many conditions these standard tests are more than enough to obtain effective
treatment. However, like many other situations in life, things are not as
simple as we wish for and so there exist many diseases with many overlapping
signs and symptoms. In the situation where a clear determination is not arrived
at in the shortest possible time, the first most obvious options for remedy are
provided to the patient. It is really a race against time.
At the
level of the population, situations as have been described above begin to
accumulate and expand over time. The causes of ill health that are not directly
targeted due to technical challenges begin to cause present serious conditions.
A clear example is the case of malaria, where most fever cases are treated as
malaria although there are more than ten pathogens that can also cause fevers
and fever-like symptoms. The same can be said about diarrhea, where the obvious
causes are bacteria, but we now know viruses do cause some cases of diarrhea. The
incomplete laboratory diagnosis has been allowed to go on for far too long in
the public health systems across the world and danger signs are beginning to
show. Some advanced countries have started to change the situation by elevating
the role of biomedical scientists in the hospitals from one that performs
routine tests to a highly trained researcher. In the US, people with PhD are now
being employed to work as postdoctoral clinical fellows. These people have the
advanced scientific and technical training to operate advanced instruments for
clinical sample analysis. The people currently working in clinical laboratories
in Ghana cannot perform these types of tests routinely.
It is
for this purpose that WACCBIP of University of Ghana took the initiative to
organize a two-week workshop to train laboratory personnel of the National
Catholic Health Service. This is the first step in changing the culture of
healthcare in this country and to move towards the new standards of operating
research level analysis in the hospitals. People with PhD are already in stop
supply in Ghana to work in the tertiary education sector. So, the strategy is
to train those who have already committed their career to clinical laboratory
work. In the first of this kind of workshop organized at the University of
Ghana from 29th January to 2nd February 2018 with the
part 2 in June 4-8, 2018, the biomedical scientists clearly demonstrated the
capacity to be trained at the masters and PhD levels. It is therefore not a
far-fetched objective to put in place a new policy for a 21st
century healthcare system in Ghana. The
advantages are many and are beyond the obvious quick remedy for patients, the
overall health care cost will dramatically reduce. The most important outcome
is to control disease conditions that becoming more and more threatening. They
are inadvertently allowed to fester and grow in the patients while futile
efforts are made to treat non-existing disease due to overlapping symptoms. The
cadre of biomedical scientist in the hospitals and clinics possess qualities
that money cannot buy, which makes their upgrade from Biomedical Scientist to
Biomedical Research Scientists a much easy exercise. Qualities such as
curiosity, intellectual power and strong interest in patient care.
It is
therefore an opportune time to develop a new kind of graduate programme for
biomedical who have been on the job for 5-10 years. It will be important to organize
a curriculum development summit at the national level to bring together key
biomedical researcher and laboratory stuff to undertake this important
exercise. The programme to be developed can be offered by multiple institutions
drawn into one system, making it possible to unify the standard of training and
to equitably share best practices nationwide. The big goal to shot for is the
establishment of a national disease surveillance and control systems that is
anchored on some hospital laboratories and a number research centers and
institutions.
google.com, pub-9398771462498500, DIRECT, f08c47fec0942fa0
-----------------------
Patrick
Kobina Arthur (PhD),
Head of
Training and Research,
West Africa
Centre for Cell Biology
of
Infectious Pathogens
University
of Ghana,
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