Condition of Service and safety must be for all including Medical Laboratory Scientists

With a heavy heart, I write this and with no perceived prejudice.

When I was a student, we went on one of our rotations at the Microbiology Department and had to go through practicals to prepare sputum slides to stain for AFBs. I asked for a facemask and some basic protective equipment to go through the sputum smear preparation.  I was asked to go out if I was not ready to learn without a mask. I think I would have been barned from the class if I had asked to see the qualification of the suspicious biohazard hood in which we were preparing the smears. The rest is left for another day.

Not long after I graduated and finished my Internship, I had a job in one of the CHAG institutions in the Ashanti Region. The biohazard hood the facility had needed maintenance and with the support of my In-Charge, we decided not to prepare sputum smears and report any for any patient. All cases were referred. We were lambasted and even several suggested that we could prepare the sputum in an airy and open space. I hold a different view on that though.

Till the hood was fixed, all cases were referred. In the training school that the technician asked me to go out if I was not ready to learn without a facemask, smears were being prepared with all the compassion one could think of without all the protection and safety. Just as the technician loved the work more than his life and work was going on without protest, no one saw the need to provide passively. Systemic failure. The technician later developed tuberculosis. The rest even about his treatment is left for another day as usual.

To recount a few of the work-related hazards I have come to know and lack of provision for personnel safety,  as we speak, one Medical Laboratory Scientist is also in the morgue awaiting burial. He also had tuberculosis of the lungs.

In many medical laboratories in Ghana in our hospitals, space and proper architecture has always been a thing mostly complained about. A space to rest, eat and drink is always a luxury if one gets. When counts were made recently, in a space of one and a half years, I can count of three Medical Laboratory Professionals going down with Kidney diseases. We can do a survey and see how much the conditions prevailing in our facilities is preventing good water drinking practices among professionals.

The very recent one which actually inspired this write up is the untimely demise of Mr. Benedict K. E. Awadzi. A brilliant chap who is neck-deep in disease surveillance in the Public Health Unit of Ghana. Till his departure, he was still one of the backbones of the Microbiology Unit of the Ho Teaching Hospital. He attended a workshop on Antimicrobial Resistance Surveillance in Kumasi as part of a project within the health services in Ghana. A project expected to run across Ghana and probably using selected sites. He together with other colleagues from the Volta Region embarked on the journey using one of the Commercial Mini Buses. On his return, he met his untimely death through an accident. A reward for his love for his job? I know attendees of the workshop will remember him for the joke on fire safety drill with the statement “who that”.

I think at this moment one is saying that these guys are careless and that is the reason for their infections and accidents. Do not rush into making those judgments when the needed provisions were not available but they chose to serve in their calling.

Is it too much to ask for the needed conditions to enable medical laboratory professionals to function in safety? What is preventing such in our facilities and by those at the helm of affairs? Must there always be a protest before the right thing is done?

All professionals need great conditions of service and that must also include the Medical Laboratory Professional in Ghana.

The accident that claimed BKA’s life