Professor Badu Akosa blasts Komfo Anokye lab scientists over indefinite strike

• Laboratory technicians at Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital are on an indefinite strike

• They are protesting the posting of two hematologists to their unit

• Professor Badu Akosa says their reasons are baseless

Professor Agyemang Badu Akosa, a former Director-General of the Ghana Health Service has taken a swipe at the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital chapter of the Ghana Association of Medical Laboratory Scientist over their basis for embarking on strike.

Laboratory technicians at the hospital are on an indefinite striker over the posting of two to the hospital’s laboratory service.

They among other things stated that they will not back down on their strike until the two hematologists are removed from the laboratory department.

In a Citi TV interview, Professor Akosa said that their reasons for embarking on the strike are untenable and without merit.

He gave an insight that haematologists are qualified to work in laboratories and that the lab is not the sole property of laboratory technicians.

“The problem we have in this country sadly is that our medical laboratory scientists do not appreciate their limitation. Two haematologists- where should they go and practice? Haematologists are doctors who have trained in blood diseases. So far as the laboratory space has different professionals, the headship can be based on competence, so we cannot sit here and say that the laboratory should be for laboratory scientists alone.

“People are being transferred to the laboratory space and you [laboratory scientists] are driving them away and because of that, there is a national strike. Why are we just splitting heads because medical laboratory scientists believe the laboratory space is for them. It is not for them,” Mr. Akosa insisted.

“The Allied Health Professional Council regulates Allied Health Professionals, and the list is clearly stated in the schedule of Act 857 and it lists those who are allied health professionals – you must be a lab technician, you must be a medical laboratory technologist or a medical laboratory scientist. These are allied health professionals. As a medical doctor, I am not an allied health professional so under no circumstance can that regulatory agency regulate my practice. This is the mistake that unfortunately, the allied health professionals are making.”