On this article we are going to
discuss in details how to start a medical laboratory in Nigeria. The question
now is what is medical laboratory? Without been told medical laboratory is not
a common medical room or an annexe of a clinic but it is better regarded as a
situation room because of the important roles that it plays in saving a
countless number of lives. The medical laboratory is not actually inferior to
the doctor’s office or the theatre, nor is it inferior to the pharmacy but it
serves parallel purpose and order in medical attention. Research has actually
shown that the medical laboratory is the very soul of diagnosing and ‘better
diagnosing’, they say ‘mean better patient care’.
Furthermore, in Nigeria today owning
a laboratory undoubtedly means owning a real big investment. Under normal
condition it is usually required that a medical laboratory is coordinated by
Medical Laboratory Technologist/Scientist, the Medical Laboratory
Technologist/Scientist must have obtained a certificate in either of MLT, MLS,
BMLS, DMLS, etc and also must have indexing of the profession’s council. In
Nigeria and anywhere in the world this qualification is actually a required working
criterion for any laboratory to be considered medical.
The following are the conditions and
requirements to start a medical laboratory in Nigeria;
1. Secure a good laboratory building:
Actually the laboratory building need to spacious, ventilated, and lightning
and with workbenches. You can actually use a rented building or a residential
apartment. Also is very important that there is a less disturbance in such
environment and the laboratory should not be related on a frequent basis and
the non-expert should not be around the laboratory and working benches at all
times.
2. Purchase the necessary equipments:
One of the most important components of any laboratory is the microscope. This
is just not a tool of Nigeria laboratory but a symbol of medical Laboratory
Science which is seen all and everywhere. Most of the laboratories in Nigeria have
a microscope in the least. This microscope is of two major types, anyone you
purchase is okay for an average Nigeria laboratory. After the microscope
another important and unavoidable are the glassware, this transparent glasses
are the most common identity of a laboratory. Thank God for advancement, a lot
of items are now made of plastics. The following are examples of glassware;
Conical & Erlenmeyer flasks, Bottles, Tubes, Funnels, Cylinders, beakers, Pipettes,
etc. All these materials listed are really relevant to any laboratory no matter
how lowly, degraded or under-privileged the laboratory is. If there are no
glass wares, there is no laboratory not to talk of medical tests.
Furthermore, no laboratory should be
found in Nigeria except it has them. Some of these materials could either be
graduated or non-graduated, but preferably the graduated ones are more okay as
they shall be further used to measure quantities. Also a laboratory is equipped
with bottles, which are from Specimen bottles through reagent bottles to drop
bottles. Although more numbers of specimen then reagent bottles can be provided
compared to drop bottles. This actually worth to explain that pipettes differ;
volumetric, graduated, blood and Pasteur pipette. They should be gotten in
appropriate proportion. After securing the above accordingly, another device that
is really needed in the medical laboratory is the Centrifuge, this is a machine
that works on the principle of spinning to sediment rapid particles such as
cell. This machine is used in the determination of PCV (packed cell volume)
which is a prominent laboratory test, and also other regularly occurring
laboratory tests. This machine is very important in your laboratory. There is
the hand centrifuge which is more antique and it also gives slower speed, and also
the motor driven one which is recommended. There is also the micro-hematocrit
centrifuge which is also motor-driven and it serves a special duty of
auto-estimating the PCV of the red blood cell column, usually in percentage as
desired. Purchasing a centrifuge is one of the good steps to take in setting up
a medical laboratory. Another important equipment in any laboratory is weighing
scale and analytical balance. Both of them seem the same, but they differ in
their functions as one measures large quantities while the other weighs smaller
quantities.
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