The National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) has urged medical laboratory scientists to ensure reliable diagnostic services under the government’s Free Primary Health Care (FPHC) programme, warning that screening without accurate confirmation could undermine patient care.
Deputy Chief Executive for Operations of the NHIA, Dr Senanu Kwesi Djokoto, said accurate laboratory testing was essential to the early detection and management of hypertension, diabetes and other non-communicable diseases prioritised under the programme.
“A screening that is not followed up by a reliable confirmation, actually, helps no one,” he said.
Dr Djokoto was speaking at the sixth Annual General Meeting of the Ghana Chapter of the West African Postgraduate College of Medical Laboratory Science (WAPCMLS).
He urged the College to establish and enforce professional standards to ensure laboratories in facilities accredited by the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) produced reliable results that could guide clinical decisions.
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On research and efficiency, Dr Djokoto called on the College to develop a research agenda focusing on access to diagnostic services, appropriate test use and value for money to guide the NHIA’s purchasing decisions.
He said the Authority was prepared to fund research that would improve its efficiency as a strategic purchaser of healthcare services.
Dr Djokoto also called for the equitable distribution and retention of specialist laboratory scientists, arguing that access to their expertise should not be concentrated in major hospitals and urban centres.
“Primary care does not need specialist or advanced laboratory equipment in every facility. What it means is organised access to specialist expertise, and one well-trained laboratory scientist can lift access across a whole cluster of facilities,” he said.
Meanwhile, Director of the Centre for Infectious Diseases, Dr Joseph Adjetey Oliver-Commey, who represented the Director-General of the Ghana Health Service (GHS), said strong primary healthcare depended on high-quality diagnostic services.
Speaking on the meeting’s theme, “Advancing Primary Health Care through Postgraduate Education, Research, Innovation and Effective Governance,” he said medical laboratory science had become a strategic pillar of healthcare, disease surveillance, health security, precision medicine and universal health coverage.
He cited the COVID-19 pandemic, recurring outbreaks of cholera, Ebola and Lassa fever, antimicrobial resistance and the rising burden of non-communicable diseases as evidence of the importance of reliable diagnostic services.
“Every unnecessary antibiotic prescribed, every delayed diagnosis of tuberculosis, every missed case of cervical cancer, every undetected diabetic complication carries enormous human and economic cost,” he said.
Dr Oliver-Commey stressed that laboratory medicine must be recognised as critical national infrastructure to strengthen disease detection, guide treatment and improve health outcomes.
