A former Director-General of the Ghana Health Service, Professor Agyemang Badu Akosa, has hit hard at members of the Komfo Anokye Chapter of the Ghana Association of Medical Laboratory Scientists (GAMLS) who are protesting the posting of the two hematologists to the Laboratory Service Department of the hospital.
Members of the Chapter have declared an indefinite strike starting Thursday, 27th May, 2021, over the move, after they started with a one-week sit-down strike.
They have vowed to call off the strike only if the two are withdrawn from the hospital’s laboratory unit.
But Prof. Akosa on Citi TV’s Point of View said the strike is unfounded, given that hematologists are equally qualified to work in laboratories.
“The problem we have in this country sadly is that our medical laboratory scientists do not appreciate their limitation. Two hematologists- where should they go and practice? Hematologists 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 pathologist believes it is problematic for the Allied Health Professional Council to dictate or regulate the functions of physicians and where they should operate from as it was seeking to do with the two hematologists.
“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.”