Since the declaration of NICN judgement between Association of Medical Laboratory Scientists (AMLSN) JUTH vs Management of JUTH in favour of AMLSN, there has been no dull moment in the camp of Association of Pathologists of Nigeria (ASSOPON) and Nigerian Medical Association (NMA). The drama has been more absorbing than the best selling home video in town.

 

For the purpose of education, the National Industrial Court of Nigeria (NICN) had ruled in the case of headship of medical laboratories in JUTH in favour of AMLSN and directed the Chief Medical Director and Director of Administration of JUTH to create Department of Medical Laboratory Services within 30 days or risk jail term as published in https://www.medicalworldnigeria.com/2017/02/national-industrial-court-lab-scientists-should-practise-without-direction-from-a-medical-doctor

 

In the ensuing drama, majority of the non-pathologists doctors have come down hard on their colleagues, the pathologists accusing them of bringing shame and disrepute to the profession. They agreed in totality that the pathologists over stepped their boundaries by attempting to head and manage the medical laboratories, a responsibility that is alien to the Medical and Dental Practitioners Act (MDPA) but conspicuously captured in the Medical Laboratory Science Council of Nigeria (MLSCN) Act 2003. 

 

They wondered why the pathologists, instead of remaining true to their MDPA Act which restricts them to only practical sessions in the medical laboratory and interpretation of laboratory results to the medical team to enable them take informed decisions on clinical management of cases, are flexing muscles with the Medical Laboratory Scientists to head them at all cost in  medical laboratories that are the natural home of the Medical Laboratory Scientists. They have since called on the pathologists to retrace their infamous steps driven by unbridled greed so as to redeem their already battered professional image as they have never won any case vs the Medical Laboratory Scientists on headship of medical laboratories in any court of competent jurisdiction.

 

Another group among the doctors has gone into a wild and weird academic expedition attempting to say that a clinical laboratory is different from a medical laboratory. This is more comical than the folklore's attempt to see garri as different from eba. Thank God Onaoluwa Abimbola has taken her precious time to take them through a GST 101 class they probably failed in the university in her script titled "Re: John Paul and the Sad Errors of English Comprehension" and published in https://www.medicalworldnigeria.com/2017/03/re-john-paul-and-the-sad-error-of-a-lack-of-english-comprehension. 

 

In their hallucinations, they insinuated that a different laboratory needs to be created to allow the Medical Laboratory Scientists head it, claiming that the existing laboratories in the hospitals are pathology laboratories not medical laboratories. Can someone help me with the difference between red blood cells and erythrocytes?

 

Again, in their activated sleeplessness, some of them have hurriedly submitted that the judgement directed the management of JUTH to 'create' and not to modify the existing medical laboratories in the hospitals. In that pathetic and feeble argument, they submitted that new laboratories (medical) should be created for Medical Laboratory Scientists while pathologists operate the existing laboratories (clinical). What lawlessness! Can they quote the law that empowers pathologists to man and manage medical laboratories?

 

The President of NMA was also caught in the mix of stray reason and vituperations. He was reported to have made defiant statements in a stakeholders meeting recently, telling his constituency to hencefoth be confrontational to Medical Laboratory Scientists as a way of scaring them away from the medical laboratories assuring them that they will appeal the NICN judgement. Can someone please bring these people to the real world and tell them that case of contempt decided in NICN cannot be appealed against.

 

While the drama continues to unfold with the pathologists in a pandemonium of reason, the 30 days ultimatum given by the NICN is counting down steadily and jail sentence is looming actively. As a client of the health sector, I call on the management of JUTH and other tertiary health institutions to be professional, mature and patriotic to Nigerians and do away with the niche of lawlessness which they have carved for themselves. The courts have made their pronouncements, rejecting the verdict of the court is same to a patient who receives a prescription from his doctor and goes ahead to take medications in variance with it. Surely, his destruction will come suddenly! A word is enough for the wise.

 

Joseph Chuks, 

Public Affairs Analyst.