Health ministry to legislate modus operandi for private medical labs

Despite the fact that more than 3,000 private medical laboratories function in the country, the lack of legislation and regulations to monitor them has resulted in the Health Ministry receiving innumerable complaints regarding the quality of the services provided by them.

To address this problem the Health Ministry is in the process of drafting the “National Health Laboratory Act”, which will mainly focus on the establishment and maintenance of medical labs and the Health Ministry’s ability to regulate, monitor and control private medical labs, the Sunday Times learns. All private medical labs will need to be registered with the Health Ministry’s Laboratory Services, with Medical Officer’s of Health (MOH)’s vested with supervisory powers.

Health Ministry’s Deputy Director General (Laboratory Services) Dr. M.G.P. Samarasinghe told the Sunday Times that the National Health Laboratory Policy was introduced in 2007, but there was no Act stating that medical labs should be registered and health authorities were not vested with powers to make inspections and take action.

“We received a considerable number of complaints from the public, with a majority of them on the accuracy of the medical reports, unqualified persons working in these laboratories, exorbitant charges and the use of sub standard medical equipment,” he said.

Dr. Samarasinghe said that a number of complaints were on blood tests for non-communicable diseases such as diabetes and cholesterol.

“Drawing blood from a patient should be done with care but we get complaints on blood clots and other reactions. These kinds of complaints arise when non qualified Medical Laboratory Technicians (MLT)’s are entrusted with such tasks. Without legislation, there is no way of taking action against these labs,” he said.

“The draft is still with the Health Ministry and will be sent to the Legal Draftsman’s Department once legal issues such as penalties and fines to be imposed for non adherence to the relevant laws, have been clarified,” he said.

“Once the Bill is passed, inspections will be done frequently. There are some outstation collection centres of private hospitals in Colombo that need to be supervised. All private medical labs will have to set up emergency care as well,” he added.

A number of complaints were on blood tests for non-communicable diseases such as diabetes and cholesterol