Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Health Min­is­ter Dr Fuad Khan is plan­ning to crack down on med­ical lab­o­ra­to­ries which op­er­ate with­out qual­i­fied per­son­nel or ac­cred­i­ta­tion.He was speak­ing af­ter sev­er­al doc­tors com­plained that med­ical labs were spring­ing up all over T&T with­out prop­er mon­i­tor­ing by the health au­thor­i­ties.Khan ad­mit­ted that prob­lem should be on the front burn­er."To be hon­est, we have not been en­gaged in reg­u­lat­ing labs be­cause we had no ma­jor com­plaints about it. How­ev­er, we re­alise now that this is a prob­lem which must be ad­dressed ur­gent­ly be­cause we are find­ing a lot of dis­crep­an­cies in lab re­sults," Khan told the T&T Guardian.

Asked whether he will be pi­lot­ing leg­is­la­tion to reg­u­late labs, Khan said that would be done next year.He added: "Right now we are try­ing to pass the Nurs­es and Mid­wife Act and the Phar­ma­cy Board Act and this is tak­ing some time. From next year we will be­gin look­ing at pass­ing a spe­cif­ic act to mon­i­tor and reg­u­late labs."This should be done ur­gent­ly and will be part of our pri­ma­ry health­care plan."Asked whether an au­thor­i­ty would be es­tab­lished to specif­i­cal­ly mon­i­tor labs, Khan said that had not yet been de­cid­ed."We haven't es­tab­lished how we can do it as yet but it is a good idea to have an au­thor­i­ty in place just as we have an am­bu­lance au­thor­i­ty," he said.

He added that the Med­ical Ac­cred­i­ta­tion Au­thor­i­ty would be re­spon­si­ble for reg­u­lat­ing all med­ical in­sti­tu­tions, in­clud­ing labs.Khan said con­sul­ta­tions would be held with stake­hold­ers to dis­cuss the is­sue.He not­ed that Ram­saran's Lab in St Au­gus­tine was the on­ly in­ter­na­tion­al­ly ac­cred­it­ed lab in the coun­try. Checks by the T&T Guardian re­vealed the lab is 1SO 15189 cer­ti­fied and has joint ac­cred­i­ta­tion with the Stan­dards Coun­cil of Cana­da.Pub­lic re­la­tions of­fi­cer of the T&T Med­ical As­so­ci­a­tion, Dr Frank Ram­lakhans­ingh, said the crack­down on non-ac­cred­it­ed labs was long over­due.

He said: "For many years we have been clam­our­ing for reg­u­lar­i­sa­tion."He said re­cent­ly a pa­tient with a life-threat­en­ing dis­ease was di­ag­nosed pos­i­tive for her­pes."I did not be­lieve the re­sult so I sent it to Ram­saran's Lab for ver­i­fi­ca­tion and this re­sult came back neg­a­tive. This is a life-threat­en­ing sit­u­a­tion and we can­not have labs be­ing run by tech­ni­cians who have an af­fil­i­a­tion to a doc­tor," Ram­lakhans­ingh said.He added that a lot of labs had cropped up with­in re­cent times."Any­body could set up a lab be­hind their of­fice. They are mush­room­ing all over the place with­out qual­i­fied tech­ni­cians. There should be a recog­nised body to deal with this," Ram­lakhans­ingh said.He said too much skul­dug­gery was go­ing on and pa­tients' lives were un­der threat.