Health professionals have been advised to be properly trained and licensed, and engage in continuous professional education and capacity building to be able to exhibit high level of professionalism to guarantee quality healthcare delivery.

Mr Alex Segbefia, Minister of Health, gave the advice in a speech read on his behalf on Thursday during the 2015 Annual National Congress and Scientific Conference of the Ghana Association Biomedical Laboratory Scientists (GABMLS) in Tamale.

The conference on the theme: “Ensuring Effective Management of Medical Laboratory Services in a Regulated Environment,” was designed to provide a unique forum for dialogue, learning new things and to discuss the state of the profession and take decisions.

“Knowing that your work is fundamental to efficient and quality healthcare delivery and in the face of the current Health Professions’ Regulatory Act, emergence and re-emergence of new diseases with new diagnostic approaches, it behooves on practitioners to be properly trained”, Mr Segbefia said.

He said Medical Laboratory Scientists performed various investigations on the body specimens and provided critical information that assisted Clinicians in making accurate diagnosis, monitoring and proper management of patients, which called for the proper training of professionals on that field to improve quality healthcare delivery.

He said the provision of quality healthcare delivery remained central in the pursuance of the government’s ‘Better Ghana Agenda,’ and that the government was committed to implementing major policies and infrastructure landmarks that seek to address challenges in the health sector.

He said government recognized the efforts of health professionals, and gave the assurance that the Ministry of Health would continue to partner for improved healthcare delivery, saying, “We appreciate the diversity of expertise among your membership”.

Mr Segbefia appealed to them to remain patient with government, and gave the assurance that it was committed to ensuring that challenges were resolved as soon as possible, and that government was also committed to supporting and resourcing the Council to render it effective in the execution of its mandate.

Mr Thomas Kwabena Gyampomah, National President of GABMLS, said the current global concept of evidence-based medicine, regulatory provisions of the law, emergence and re-emergence of new diseases placed an arduous responsibility and expectations on medical laboratory practitioners to maintain a high levels of standardization.

This, he said, would ensure that the services and the evidences provided were accurate, reliable and consistent with available scientific and clinical data.

Alhaji Limuna Mohammed-Muniru, Northern Regional Minister, in a speech read on his behalf, appealed to GABMLS to support the Ministry of Health to achieve its mandate of helping to deliver quality healthcare.

He commended GABMLS for choosing Northern Region for its Congress, and indicated that the region was a haven for business development and investment.

He, therefore appealed to investors to re-locate to the region to help create employment.