– urges others to get on board
The Anamayah Memorial Hospital laboratory located at Belvedere, Corentyne is the newest member of the clique of certified laboratories in Guyana.
Through the Guyana National Bureau of Standards (GNBS), the laboratory was certified to the National Standard GYS 170:2009 “General requirements for the operations of a laboratory”.
This certification allows for the laboratory to be recognised as providing a standard of care and service to clients.
The Anamayah Memorial Hospital laboratory first approached the GNBS in 2014, indicating an interest in becoming certified. After a complete formulation of its manuals required by the GYS 170 and implementation of Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), certification was first granted to the laboratory in 2019.
The Hospital’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Ian Anamayah stated, “The whole gist of having an institution is to ensure not only [that] you provide a service but to ensure that you provide a standard of care… People coming to the institution would want to know if what they’re paying for has any standard, if it has any calibre. Is it doing the right tests? And are the tests accurate? [But] now having certification puts patients’ minds at ease.”
Given this, he also encouraged other facilities within Region Six (East Berbice-Corentyne), especially those that are established and provide similar services, to jump on the bandwagon and take the necessary steps to obtain certification so that they can be recognised through standardisation.
Residents of the region usually travel to Georgetown to access quality medical tests from a laboratory certified by the GNBS; with the Anamayah Memorial Hospital laboratory being certified, they now have easy and convenient access to the same standard of quality medical tests they would receive in Georgetown.
The CEO pointed out that the facility encountered some difficulties in its bid for recertification, since there were no certified medical laboratory in the region to do collate (inter-comparison) testing or double check its results for accuracy.
“As it is now, we had to send samples to Georgetown, because there is no one in Berbice that could’ve done that,” he shared.
Dr Ryan Anamayah, who is the Medical Director at the Hospital, noted that having good practices in place alone could not guarantee consistent accuracy and quality results.
“Having the GYS 170 standards in place would have given us an opportunity to actually have our lab consistently reproducing results on a day-to-day basis. Prior to 2014, there were no checks and balances employed,” he said, lauding the GNBS Certification Programme.
The Medical Director noted that with the help of the Bureau, the facility is able to access proficiency testing of its laboratory equipment, which is recommended in the national standard.
