AN EVALUATION OF CLINICAL LABORATORY SERVICES IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA -EX AFRICA SEMPER ALIQUID NOVI

Pathology services represent the rational, scientific basis of the pra ctice of clinical care. It-does not represent deus ex machina, an impl ausible solution to a complex plot, but rather the way in which clinic al care can be audited, controlled, guided and kept appropriate to the funds and the skills available. Arguments are presented to support th is statement as well as to analyse what is wrong with health care, fro m the point of view of laboratory medicine, in sub-Saharan Africa. In most African countries 'first world' technology has to be imported by economies barely able to sustain the basic requirements of human life. Badly needed foreign exchange is obtained by growing export crops at the cost of traditional Lifestyle, disenfranchising communities, urban isation, and even at the cost not being able to grow food. War, corrup tion, lack of accountantability even in the Western sense of being abl e to go to the polls every so often, lack of empowerment, low Literacy rate etc all debase the communities, with minimal exceptions, of Afri ca. Health care is under the same capricious rule as all other public services: investment in laboratories is poor and most have no access t o a professional laboratory at all. More investment, not less; expansi on of pathology services not restricting them, is needed throughout th e continent. (C) 1997 Published by Elsevier Science B.V.