KP govt enhancing medical labs quality, says official

PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government has started practical steps for quality enhancement of medical laboratories to bring them on a par with international standards.

This announcement was made by the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Health Care Commission Aazar Sardar at a seminar. The Pakistan National Accreditation Council working under the Ministry of Science and Technology and Health Care Commission had organised the seminar on Tuesday.

It was aimed at giving awareness to the management of medical laboratories to adopt standard procedures and bring laboratories up to the international standards. Doctors, laboratories technicians, paramedics and other staff from both the government and non-governmental hospitals and laboratories attended the seminar.

In his welcome address, the CEO said the provincial government had also started work to regulate the services of paramedics in the province. He said the commission had launched a crackdown on the sub-standard laboratories and had so far sealed 353 laboratories running illegally in various districts of the province.

Chairman, Board of Governors, KP Health Care Commission, Dr Jehangir Khalil, said the provincial government was utilising all its resources to provide better health care facilities to the people of the province.

He said KP Health Care Commission would train the KP laboratories staff with the assistance of Pakistan National Accreditation Council as to enhance standard of medical laboratories and provide credible and accurate results to the patients.

Director General Medical Laboratories Pakistan National Accreditation Council Dr Asma Gul Khattak said the council would provide assistance to the laboratories in acquiring accreditation. She said that for quality enhancement accreditation of the laboratories was a must and medical laboratories in Lahore, Karachi and Islamabad were getting it.