Where are we now in Sudan?

Still in Sudan, there is no agreed job title for the graduates of the medical laboratory sciences institutions! The term technician or technologist has still patronisingly been used. For the benefit of the profession, I hope the dilemma of the appropriate job title in the Sudan will be sorted as soon as possible.
One of the prerequisites in establishing any efficient profession is first-rate staffing, which is watchfully balanced between effective recruitment and successful retention. In the far past the field of medical lab sciences was not that advanced, so any minimal training of secondary school leavers used to be sufficient for effective recruitment, and here the term technician had emerged as the training given was below university standards. At that time, I suspect medical interventions used to rely heavily on the sharp clinical skills of the medical practitioners. During the last decades, there has been tremendous jump in the basic sciences that compromise the backbone of the medical lab sciences and pathology in general. Consequently, the necessity of these professions to deliver the appropriate service to medicine has changed. Accordingly, revaluation of the need of the medical lab sciences did come about, especially in the developed world. As a result, the general conditions for the initial recruitment has been revolutionized and made attractive for candidates with good or at least acceptable academic standard. I believe the same happened in the Sudan with the appreciative help of the current government. Parallel to that, ones should expect the occurrence of suitable measures for successful retention and recruitment that is more effective. Unfortunately, this has partially (only academically but not professionally) happened in the Sudan but has fully taken place in many other countries and the list is still growing. This will affect both the effective recruitment and successful retention with competent candidates leaving the profession beside failure of recruiting those of high calibre. Regrettably, this will have adverse effects on the standard of the service provided, which will deepen the deterioration of the health system in our country. The health system that has been flourishing in many other counties used to be far behind us.

Regards,
Dr. Abdel Rahman Elias Elamin, MSc, PhD, CSci, MICR, FIBMS
University of Oxford