An NGO in Nigeria (FAE foundation) decided to take a critical look at the rivalry
in the country's health sector and these were her submissions
1. What is the root cause of the problem(s)?
2. What is the norm in other developed countries?

The root cause of the problem in the health sector has been DOING THE
WRONG THING WHICH SEEMS NORMAL overtime

The source of the misunderstanding was from some teaching hospitals in
Nigeria where there were no pathologist ( clinical laboratory doctors) hence the
scientist were employed and allowed to work unsupervised and their results
were sent directly to the physician in the clinic for correlation of the test results
Now medicine has grown in the country and some doctors now expanding into
clinical laboratory medicine (which had been ongoing internationally).....the
normal practice has to be put in place...hence the scientist are not okay with
doing the right thing and they are now feeling that the doctors want to take
their job

On what is obtainable internationally ( international standards or best
practices)
Pathologist laboratory [clinical laboratory] is present and operational in
developed countries....IT'S NOT A NIGERIAN IDEOLOGY....the country adopted
the British type of health care system

Also medical laboratory science is a well developed field in the in industrialized
nations.....but in the developed world the majority of them work in their domain
(research labs) which is limited or not found in Nigeria....a few of them work in
other medical laboratories such as pathologist lab

The medical lab scientist is trained to carry out test using human samples with
extra training on research to discover new things/ scientific ways of doing the
test
The pathologist is trained to do "same" test with human samples but with extra
training on the correlation between the lab results and the patient's clinical
features documented on the request forms so has to support or correct the
initial diagnosis of the physician in the clinic

The law that established the pathologist practice in Nigeria and in the world
mandates the pathologist to supervise the test done by the scientist.....this is
to double check the results, and if on review of the test results there is/are no
correlate between the results and the clinical features of the patient...he has to
repeat the test before endorsement of the test results

This process is to ensure that the doctor, in the clinic, who requested for the
test is not misled to wrongly diagnosis and wrongly treatment the patient
This whole process is misinterpreted by some of us in the health sector as king
vs slave phenomenon or doctors trying to do every work or doctors trying to be
medical laboratory scientist

Nigerian doctors said they have not asked med lab scientist to stop working in
clinical laboratory but what they are advocating for is standard practice to be
done in the interest of people's life

The awareness to the fact above is poor even among the health care
professionals.....we are sure it will be poorer in the public

We guess this fact may not be far from Yayaha Ahmed committee's report
because we made alot of phone calls to tertiary hospitals in developed
countries and we also searched the internet for standard medical dictionaries
and encyclopedia to get the truth..... This is one of the NGO's contributions to
safe guard the health of the citizens

Let the truth be told because it has to do with human lives
Thanks.