Experts, including the Director -General, Standards Organisation of Nigeria, Dr. Joseph Odumodu, have identified the use of contaminated water as a factor increasing wrong diagnosis and analysis in laboratories across the country.
According to Odumodu, who was represented by the agency’s Director of Laboratory Services, Mr. Louis Njoku, many laboratories do not use the appropriate purification method for the water used for analysis.
He spoke at a one-day workshop in Lagos for stakeholders on laboratory analysis, organised by Katchey Company Limited, a laboratory supply firm, Standard Organisation of Nigeria and Merck Pharmaceuticals and Life Science Limited.
The theme of the conference was, “Innovative Solutions for Production of Pure and Ultrapure Water in the Laboratory”.
“Many laboratories want to cut corners. In Nigeria, this is a huge problem and that is why many of the laboratory samples we send for further analyses abroad are often rejected.
“We will no longer accept such practices. There is a level of purity that water that is going to be used in analysis must have. Otherwise, you introduce contaminants and errors into analysis and get wrong test results.”
The Chief Executive Officer, Katchey Company Limited, Mrs. Kate Isa, said water was the most widely used and critical reagent in any laboratory. Yet, it is the one whose quality is often compromised.
She said it was high time Nigeria stepped up to the globally acceptable standards of laboratory practices to avoid being blacklisted.
“I have seen cases where laboratories were using table and bottled water for their analysis. Even though the water is good for drinking, it is not good enough for laboratory analysis because there is no way the result from the test will be correct,” she said.
She lamented that many patients had been given the wrong treatment based on the wrong diagnoses from these laboratories.
Isa said that the workshop was organised to ensure that lab managers were aware of the side effect of using sub standard laboratory reagents in their practices.
Water analysis expert from Merck Millipore Lab Water Merck Initiative Africa, Dr. Maurice Memmi, called on laboratory managers to ensure that the quality water in their labs are of international standards.
“If the right water is not used for analysis, there is no way the right results can be got, even if the laboratory equipment is good,” he added.
By: BUKOLA ADEBAYO
The Punch
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