Uganda: Hospitals Urged On Evidence Based Diagnosis As Ihk Launches C-Labs

Hospitals and medical service providers have been urged to always use laboratories to ensure they make evidence based diagnosis for patients.

"Laboratory services are essential to delivery of quality care. They should be made available to all people in Uganda. When you have poor lab services, you subject patients to inappropriate tests, inappropriate treatment, waste of the scarce resources and paying highly," said Dr.Susan Nabadda, the Commissioner for laboratories in the Ministry of Health.

"Imagine you don't know why there is a fever and you keep using expensive antibiotics and fever doesn't go. You keep changing antibiotics but the fever persists yet by doing a small blood sample test in the laboratory could have solved the problem."

Dr.Nabadda was on Tuesday speaking during the launch of the C-labs at the International Hospital Kampala)(IHK) in Namuwongo.

The official from the Health Ministry said that using laboratories helps hospitals and other medical service providers do proper diagnosis of the problems that patients have but also offer the best prescription.

"At all times, diagnosis should be evidence based. A wrong diagnosis means wrong or no treatment given to the patient. This means the patient might lose his or her life. However, a well-functioning laboratory ensures patients are treated well and in a timely manner."

According to Sukhmeet Sandhu , the International Medical Group CEO, their internationally recognized diagnostic laboratory will help provide quality testing and diagnosis.

"As IMG, we continue to improve and evolve to meet the needs of our patients. Our laboratory team consists of highly experienced pathologists, medical technologists, technicians, lab assistants and other specialists,"Sukhmeet said.

He added that C-lab operates in 18 locations across the county including IHK and IMC clinics using the state of the art equipment to perform over 4000 tests including those under molecular pathology, cytogenetics, histopathology, clinical biochemistry, immune chemistry, microbiology, hematology and blood transfusion.

Read the original article on Nile Post.