Medical Laboratory Scientists on COVID-19 in Ghana: The “devil” in the details.

In the wake of the announcement by the Ministry of Health about the six confirmed cases of COVID-19, the leadership of GAMLS wishes to make the following statements:

The Ghana Association of Medical Laboratory Scientists (GAMLS) wishes to commend the government and the managers of the health systems in Ghana for their swift actions that gave some credit to the country’s readiness for this global pandemic.

GAMLS wishes to assure the general public that Ghana has the human resources with the requisite expertise and competence to collect, package, transport and test samples for the 2019 Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV).

As a professional body, it is part of our mandate to provide sound technical advice to the MoH/GHS to support the National Emergency Operation Center on ways allocated funds meant to support the fight against COVID-19 could be better used to equip clinical and public health laboratories across Ghana in a cost-effective manner.

Whilst we commend the support provided to the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research (NMIMR) and Kumasi Center for Collaborative Research into Tropical medicine (KCCR), there are existing public laboratories that must be strengthened as well to enable the medical laboratories to perform their duties in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond.

The GAMLS believes that decentralization of the testing process is the surest way of identifying, isolating and managing COVID-19 cases. There is the need to strengthen our health systems to be able to detect, trace and contain the infections recorded in Ghana. There is the need to scale up the capacity of at least the five teaching hospital laboratories and the public health laboratories (PHLs) to be able to spread out the testing facilities across the country (Northern, Middle, and Southern belt) and to address other future outbreaks.

It is instructive to note that at the moment, the National Public Health Reference Laboratory (NPHRL) in Accra and Zonal Public Health Laboratory in Tamale are known to have the capacity to perform specialized testing but are yet to receive any scale-up in diagnostic capacity or training. With minimal structural modifications, logistics, and refresher training, these PHLs could provide expanded testing to the entire country in order to reduce testing and result turnaround time (TAT).

It is our fear that, as suspected cases increase, the pressure that will mount on the only facilities testing for the infections now will be overwhelming and the system might break down since we might experience longer Turn Around Time (TAT) resulting in delays in release of results. The fear might be unbearable to suspected cases and their contacts.

We are also concerned that in this emergency mode, the MOH and GHS could have forgotten about its own apex, teaching, regional and zonal laboratories that provide specialized testing on a day-to-day for the people of Ghana and thus miss this opportunity to empower them to even do more.

We further commend MOH/GHS for the training for a limited number of laboratory professionals and other health workers in the country on the appropriate use of PPEs and sample handling. We, however, wish to call for a more aggressive and coordinated training regime for medical laboratory professionals at the tertiary, regional and district hospitals considering the central role of laboratory professionals in the collection, transport and management and analysis of samples from both suspected and unsuspected persons.

The government should explore the possibilities of collaborating with researchers at the Universities to restructure and resource the Public Health Laboratories, Teaching Hospital Laboratories and selected laboratories at the country’s borders with the state of the art portable PCR devices to enable them test COVID-19 suspected samples in a timely fashion.

The emergence and re-emergence of diseases like COVID-19, Ebola and other tropical diseases have further underscored the vital role Medical laboratory services continue to play in the healthcare system including disease prevention, detection, and surveillance and patient management. There is a need, therefore, to strengthen medical laboratory services by implementing the National Health Laboratory Policy documents which have gathered dust for the past seven years in order to secure the well-being of our citizens.

GAMLS calls on all members across the country to adhere STRICTLY to Good Laboratory Practices and measures enumerated by the Ministry of Health and WHO for collecting and testing samples from suspected persons by wearing the appropriate PPEs and approved diagnostic protocols.

The general public is also being advised to remain calm and follow the recommendations being provided by the Ghana Health Services.

As a professional body, we assure the Ministry of Health, Ghana Health Service, their partners and the general public of our commitment to support the management and testing of COVID-19 suspected patients in Ghana. Our members are deeply committed to providing the best of our professional care in these difficult times.

The President Signed.

COVID-19 march 2020 GAMLS_EXPOSITION ON RELEASE