Reinstate forced-out lab physicians or we’ll disrupt healthcare delivery – GMA to KATH, Korle Bu

The Ghana Medical Association (GMA) has demanded that all physicians forced out of the labs of Komfo Anokye, Korle-Bu and Cape Coast Teaching hospitals are reinstated immediately.

The GMA made the demand in a communiqué issued at the end of its National Executive Council meeting.

The association said all resident medical doctors in and training with the Ghana College of Physicians Surgeons and West African Colleges of Physicians, as well as those pursuing programmes in Laboratory Medicine, should be or granted “unfettered full access” to all relevant laboratory spaces within the various teaching sites.”

The demands of the GMA come amidst an ongoing strike by lab scientists at KATH and other public hospitals across the country in protest of the posting of lab physicians to the haematology unit of KATH, where the strike first began.

The GMA noted in its statement that all threats directed at these laboratory physician residents and specialists should “cease forthwith”.

It hinted at taking “drastic measures that will definitely disturb the current seeming industrial harmony and health care delivery throughout the country.”

Referencing a report of a committee set up by the Minister of Health in 2016 on the National Health Laboratory Policy, the GMA quoted portions that said: “In making the appointment, the relevant scientific and technical preparation should count, just as the ability to provide leadership to a multi-disciplinary team covering all the different aspects of the laboratories work, including research and service delivery in the case of the teaching hospitals”.

The group quoted the report further that “it is inconceivable that any major laboratory can keep out Pathologists or Laboratory Medicine Specialists”, adding: “There is no strong reason for keeping out any group of relevant professionals from the hospital laboratories.”