When
quality of medical laboratories in the state are already in question, the
courses offered by a majority of these private laboratories are further
challenged with most of them having no approval from the government. Apart from
this, most of the labs that offers various courses have no qualified and
separate teaching staff, according to the latest report of the Directorate of
Economics and Statistics on private medical laboratories in Kerala 2014.
Only 37 of the the 204 private medical
laboratories that offers various certificate, diploma and other courses have
government approval. The maximum number of private labs that offers such courses are in Ernakulam and Thrissur districts and these two districts also
top the list of labs that do not have approval.
As per the
report of the Directorate of Economics and
Statistics, certificate courses of 14 laboratories of a total of 71 are
approved.Ernakulam has only one approved lab out of the 34 labs that offer
certificate courses. In Thrissur, all
the 13 labs that provide the course have no approval.
With regard
to diploma courses, 60 labs that provide them are not approved and only 18 have
the government's nod. Here again Ernakulam and Thrissur top the list. In Ernakulam only the courses of
three labs of the 32 labs that offer diploma are approved. And in Thrissur, only 2 of the
total 16 are government approved.
When contacted, Health Minister V S Sivakumar agreed that the government has no restriction
on the private laboratories and the courses that are offered. ''Now any one can
open a lab at any place by having a certificate from the Local Bodies. This
will change once the Kerala Clinical Establishments (Registration,
Regulation and Accreditation) Bill will come into affect. This will be
introduced in the next assembly session, which will help in monitoring the
numerous clinical laboratories in the state,'' he said.
The report also points out there are not much
teaching staff in the private Medical Laboratories. ''There are
only 53 teaching staff working in the Private Medical Laboratories of the
State. Prima facie this looks senseless, but true. Because many of the Private
Medical Laboratories have no separate teaching staff post, and these are
managed by the regular technical staff,'' the report said.
Source: The Newindian express
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