PUBLIC DIAGNOSTIC LABORATORIES

PUBLIC DIAGNOSTIC LABORATORIES Privately owned diagnostic clinics are necessary services and it is good to have them around. I am a regular customer in one of those facilities, and I am quite happy about the quality of their services. What makes me sad however is that it seems that only the middle class could afford to pay for their services, thus leaving out a huge segment of the population that have no access to medical laboratory services at all. As it is supposed to be, private customers could avail of the services of private medical laboratories, no matter how expensive these are, as long as they could afford to pay. On the other hand, low income people do not have the luxury of that choice, because as far as I know, there are no public medical laboratory services that they could avail of for free, if you know what I mean. For sure, there are many public health centers that are offering their services for free, but how well could the doctors in these centers diagnose their patients if they do not have the laboratory results that are necessary for their diagnosis? That is really the root of the problem, and the only solution to that is to build these free public medical laboratory centers. In theory, the graduates TESDA's short term laboratory technician courses may already be qualified to work in these laboratories, instead of the graduates of the four year medical technology courses. If for example there is a need to staff laboratories in all 42,000 barangays, it will have to be a mix of lab techs and med techs. It is possible that some of the Barangay Health Centers might have their own built-in diagnostic laboratories, but that would seem to be the exception, rather than the rule. Vantaztic, Inc., a leading supplier of modified container vans has an existing design that is suitable for these medical labs. IKE SENERES/06-24-2024