By Dr. Paul John
I was elated when I read the court judgement involving the management of Jos University Teaching Hospital (JUTH) and the medical laboratory scientists. To me, that judgement has brought to an end the incessant physical assaults of our resident pathologists by their supposed neighbours in their working places. If there is anything I like judicial officers for, it is their professional use and choice of words. Surprisingly those not well grounded in English language have started celebrating when the fight is about to start. The order made by Justice Nkechi Esewe of the National Industrial Court of Nigeria (NICN) was for a department of medical laboratory science to be created and not to be restructured. One can only create what has never been in existence, while one can only restructure anything not properly constituted. The Medical Laboratory Science Council of Nigeria Act Cap. I14 Laws of the Federation of Nigeria 2004, and for related matters empowers the Medical Laboratory Science Council of Nigeria to regulate the practice of medical laboratory science, but not clinical laboratory science.
By this judgement, the court recognises that the existing laboratories in our tertiary hospitals, headed by pathologists, are clinical laboratories, hence they must not be headed by laboratory scientists in consonance with the Medical and Dental Practitioners Act Cap. 221, Law of the Federation of Nigeria 1990 (as amended), which empowers the Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria to make regulations for the operation of clinical laboratory practice in the field of pathology and its sub-specialties, hence only professionals whose certificates are registrable with MDCN can head our clinical laboratories. For those still ignorant of who a pathologist is, a pathologist is not only the specialist doctor (the Histopathologist) who performs an autopsy, but also can be a medical microbiologist, haematologist/immunologist or a chemical pathologist. This recent NICN judgement is the best judgement I have ever seen in recent years. If our current clinical laboratories were not properly constituted, the judge would order for the immediate restructuring of the clinical laboratories so that medical laboratory scientists would head them.
Dr. Paul John writes from Port Harcourt