By Amindeh Blaise Atabong, January 8, 2016
Cameroon Journal, Yaounde – Dr. Ateba Etoundi Aristide Otto, Director of Pharmacy, Medicine and Laboratories in the Ministry of Public Health has said the 1990 decree on the formation of medical laboratories in the country is obsolete and is to blame for the chaos that exists in the sector.
According to the director, the problem of laboratories in Cameroon is on the same level as that of fake drugs sold on roadsides and in markets.
Ateba was speaking in an interview he recently granted the national bilingual daily, Cameroon Tribune.
“The situation is a matter of great concern to the Ministry of Public Health. The regulations are obsolete – dating back to 1990. So, there are many things that need to be reviewed. Some laboratories do not have the appropriate staff and equipment and don’t even know the standard operational procedures to respect. In most cases, the results are not accurate and therefore not reliable. If you investigate, you will even find out that the authorisation they have is not correct,” Ateba said. He added that fake test results they produce lead to wrong diagnoses and prescriptions; thus the treatment might even be worse.
However, the official noted that they are working hard to control the situation, though he admitted that no matter how much they combat it, it will still persist.
The Cameroon Journal gathered that apart from the specific documents required for opening medical laboratories, the applicant is first of all supposed to be a medical biologist. But this is hardly respected.
The director said that practitioners supposed to be periodically obliged to go for refresher courses but the current decree does not oblige them to do so. “You can have somebody who graduated in the 1980s and is still practising with methods that have been forgotten. He doesn’t know and does not have the appropriate equipment; so he gives out wrong results,” Ateba said.
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