ABBOTTABAD, Oct 24: National Accreditation Programme for clinical laboratories has been launched and all laboratories will be registered with the College of Pathology of Pakistan (CPP) soon after legislation.

This was stated by Lt Gen (retd) Manzoor Ahmed, former surgeon general of Pakistan and principal of the CPP, while addressing inaugural session of three-day Annual Pathology Conference of Pakistan as chief guest at Ayub Medical College, Abbottabad on Friday.

The conference will be attended by over 200 pathologists from all over the country. Speakers will discuss and present their lectures on the recent developments taking place in the field.

The chief guest said that all was being done to remove “quackery” from the field and a pilot project had been launched by the college in Lahore for standardisation of laboratories.

Prof Jamil Ahmed Mirza, president of Pakistan Association of Pathologists (PAP) said that pathology was the heart and soul of medical sciences and as pathologists were not only involved in diagnosis of the disease but also in the treatment of the patients.

The PAP president presented the bleak picture of the state of affairs of the laboratories being run in every corner of the country by the people who neither have training nor are they qualification to do the job. He said that they were delivering un-validated lab reports and results daily, costing patients unnecessary and wasteful expenditure as well as posing great threat to the well-being and life of patients.

Jamil Ahmed Mirza stressed upon the urgent need of restructuring and reforms and demanded to introduce the licensing of laboratories, so that the people who hold proper qualification could only run clinical laboratories.

He remarked that in Pakistan there was no check on the quality of equipments. Mr Mirza said that locally produced equipments didn’t come up to the required standards the imports cost dearly.

He disclosed that according to reports, some local manufacturers were using the packing of foreign brands and selling it to laboratories for which he suggested the government and the Ministry of Health to establish quality control mechanisms in line with the recommendations made by World Health Organisation (WHO).

Ahmed Mirza urged tax exemptions on purchase and import of laboratory equipments as it would enable the laboratory owners to reduce the rates of lab tests for the benefit of general public.

Earlier Ehsan Wadood, principal Bolan Medical College, Quetta; Syed Humayun Shah, principal Ayub Medical College, Abbottabad; Prof Alam Zeb Manan, chief executive Ayub Medical Complex Hospital; Prof Dr Abdul Khaliq, chairman Organising Committee and Dr Noman Siddique, the organising secretary spoke on the occasion.

Renowned researcher Prof Dr A. H. Nagi presented a lecture on the latest research in the filed of pathology.

Dr Noman Siddique said that the three-day conference would be followed by posters competitions.