Challenges to laboratory hematology practice: Egypt perspective

Abstract

Laboratory hematology is an integral part of all clinical laboratories along the extensive healthcare facilities in Egypt. The aim of this review is to portrait the laboratory hematology practice in Egypt including its unique socioeconomic background, blood disease pattern, education and training, regulatory oversight, and the related challenges. Current practice varies widely between different parts of the healthcare system in terms of the range of tests, applied techniques, workforce experience, and quality of service. The national transfusion service (NBTS) in Egypt has been recently upgraded and standardized according to the World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines. Formal postgraduate education roughly follows the British system. Laboratory hematology specialization is achieved through 2-3 years masters' degree followed by 2-4 years doctorate degree in clinical pathology with training and research in hematology. Improvement of laboratory hematology education is recently undergoing a reform as a part of the modernization of higher education policy and following the standards developed by the National Quality Assurance and Accreditation Agency (NQAAA). Accreditation of medical laboratories is recently progressing with the development of the "Egyptian Accreditation Council" (EGAC) as the sole accreditation body system and training of assessors. Current laboratory system has many challenges, some are related to the inadequate system performance, and others are unique to laboratory hematology issues. The rapid technological advances and therapeutic innovations in hematology practice call for an adapting laboratory system with continuous upgrading.

Improving Education and Research in Haematology and Blood Transfusion in Africa: Panacea to Improving the Health and Wellbeing of Patients in the Region

“…The treatment plan for any disease is based on proper diagnosis; there was noticeably less preference for certain segments of the workforce responsible for laboratory diagnosis. Furthermore, the trained workforce needs facilities to work in, and less reference was also made to this issue in the included articles, but an inequitable distribution of advanced clinical and diagnostic centres in urban areas was reported by a study by Rizk (2018). There were a few high-quality haematology research works as part of postgraduate programmes, but its replica outside the academic programme was not reported.…”