Pinecrest Calls for State of Emergency on Laboratory Quality Assurance in Nigeria
By Naomi Onome
Pinecrest Healthcare Limited has called on the Federal Government and state governments to declare a state of emergency on quality assurance in medical laboratory practice across Nigeria, warning that inaccurate laboratory results could have serious consequences for diagnosis, treatment and patient safety.
The Managing Director of Pinecrest Healthcare Limited, Dr Chijioke Onyia, made the call on Tuesday, October 6, 2026, at a press briefing to announce the company’s inaugural Quality Assurance Summit scheduled for October 10.
The summit, themed “From Bench to Benchmark – Raising Laboratory Quality Standards for Patient Care,” is designed to bring healthcare professionals and other stakeholders together to examine the importance of quality assurance in medical laboratory practice, identify existing gaps and explore practical approaches to improving diagnostic accuracy, reliability and patient safety.
According to Onyia, the theme reflects the need for medical laboratories to move beyond merely producing test results to developing systems in which quality is continuously measured, monitored, improved and demonstrated.
He said the ultimate objective of laboratory quality assurance was not simply to produce technically acceptable results but to ensure better patient care.
“From bench to benchmark represents a call for laboratories to move beyond merely performing tests to developing systems in which quality is continuously measured, monitored, improved and demonstrated,” he said.
Onyia explained that laboratory investigations were central to modern healthcare because their results influence clinical diagnosis, treatment decisions, disease monitoring and assessment of patient outcomes.
He warned that an inaccurate or unreliable laboratory result could have serious implications for a patient, stressing that quality assurance must therefore cover the entire analytical pathway.
He said this should begin from the moment a test is requested and the patient prepared, through sample collection and transportation, analysis, result validation, reporting and clinical interpretation.
The Pinecrest MD said the summit would examine how healthcare institutions could strengthen each of these components as part of a sustainable quality management system.
He listed the key areas of discussion at the summit as quality assurance in modern laboratory practice; people, process and technology as the three drivers of laboratory excellence; quality beyond compliance and making quality a culture rather than a checklist; practical illustration of external quality assurance and proficiency testing services; as well as a panel discussion on quality assurance in medical laboratory practice.
Onyia stressed that quality should not be treated merely as a regulatory obligation or an exercise undertaken only when laboratories were preparing for inspection or accreditation.
He said sustainable quality required a culture in which every member of a laboratory team understood how his or her actions could affect the reliability of a result and, ultimately, the quality of care received by a patient.
“Compliance is important, but sustainable quality requires something deeper. It requires a culture of quality in which every member of the laboratory team understands how his or her actions can affect the reliability of a laboratory result and ultimately the care received by a patient,” he said.
He added that Pinecrest Healthcare believed that raising laboratory quality standards required collaboration among governments, regulators, laboratory medicine professionals, healthcare institutions and other stakeholders.
The summit is expected to attract medical laboratory scientists, pathologists, clinicians and physicians, laboratory managers, hospital managers and administrators, regulatory and government agencies, professional associations, academia and training institutions, diagnostic laboratories, medical equipment and in-vitro diagnostics companies, quality assurance professionals, members of the media and other healthcare professionals interested in laboratory quality.
Every laboratory result represents a patient
Onyia said the summit would adopt a patient-centred approach, stressing that behind every laboratory specimen was a human being waiting for an answer that could determine the course of his or her treatment.
He said a laboratory result could determine whether a patient received medication, underwent a procedure, was admitted to hospital, was discharged, received further investigation or was reassured.
“Every medical laboratory result represents a patient. Behind every specimen is a person waiting for an answer,” he said.
According to him, laboratory quality is therefore not merely about machines, reagents, procedures or numbers but about people and ensuring that healthcare professionals can make clinical decisions with confidence.
He said the quality of laboratory diagnosis was particularly important to strengthening Nigeria’s healthcare system because lapses in laboratory diagnosis could affect every other stage of patient care.
“If they get it right, everybody will move in the right direction. If they get it wrong, every other person in the care process will also move in the wrong direction. The doctors move in the wrong direction, the nurses will move in the wrong direction, and the pharmacists will move in the wrong direction,” he said.
Onyia cited cases in which patients could receive conflicting genotype results from laboratories or be wrongly diagnosed and treated for one condition when they were suffering from another.
He gave the example of a patient with stomach or colon cancer potentially being treated for gastric ulcer because of diagnostic lapses.
He argued that improving laboratory quality assurance would help ensure that diagnoses made in Nigeria could be relied upon by healthcare providers, including when patients travelled abroad for further treatment.
According to him, the problem was not the competence of Nigerian doctors, many of whom excel when practising abroad, but the quality of the diagnostic processes supporting clinical decisions.
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“It is still the Nigerian doctors that go abroad and excel. Why are they not excelling here the way they will excel abroad? One of the major reasons is in the quality of the diagnosis process,” he said.
Pinecrest partners Medical Laboratory Science Council
Responding to questions on the regulation and licensing of medical laboratories, Onyia clarified that the Medical Laboratory Science Council of Nigeria (MLSCN) is the statutory body responsible for registering and regulating the practice of medical laboratory science in Nigeria.
He said Pinecrest Healthcare Limited was working closely with the Council and other stakeholders in promoting quality assurance.
According to him, the MLSCN had been informed about the forthcoming summit and had been invited to participate.
He said the partnership was not new, recalling that Pinecrest and the Council had collaborated about a decade ago on advocacy workshops focused on quality assurance.
“In 2016, Medical Laboratory Science Council partnered with Pinecrest Healthcare Limited to mount advocacy workshops in the area of quality assurance across four regions of the country,” Onyia said.
He explained that the workshops were held in Abuja, Lagos, Enugu and Port Harcourt, with international experts brought in to discuss different aspects of quality assurance and the components that could be implemented in medical laboratory practice.
He added that Pinecrest and the Council had continued to have other engagements on quality assurance since then.
Onyia said the summit was not intended to create new licensing criteria for medical laboratories because the requirements and conditions for licensing are already established and regulated by the MLSCN.
Rather, he said, the objective was to bring quality assurance to the forefront of discussions around medical laboratory practice and ensure that it occupied a central position in efforts to improve healthcare delivery.
He also said Pinecrest was collaborating with other stakeholders involved in quality assurance to ensure that laboratory results could be trusted by doctors and other healthcare providers.
Concern over poorly equipped laboratories
In response to diverse questions of concern asked by journalists during the briefing, Onyia reiterated that the regulatory and licensing framework for medical laboratories already falls within the mandate of the MLSCN.
He said the focus of the summit would instead be on strengthening compliance with quality assurance standards and promoting a culture in which quality becomes part of everyday laboratory operations.
Call for government action
Onyia urged governments at the national and sub-national levels to provide adequate resources to enable medical laboratories to implement robust and globally acceptable quality assurance protocols.
He also called on relevant regulatory bodies to ensure that laboratories complied with minimum quality assurance standards and urged all stakeholders to collectively advocate for strict implementation of quality assurance throughout medical laboratory practice.
“Our wish is that governments at all levels and all stakeholders in medical laboratory practice should declare a state of emergency in the area of quality assurance in medical laboratory practice in Nigeria,” he said.
“We at Pinecrest believe that raising laboratory quality is a collective responsibility. Government, regulators, laboratory medicine professionals and healthcare institutions all have a role to play.”
He said Pinecrest’s long-term aspiration was to see Nigerian medical laboratory practice reach a point where quality becomes a culture and not just a checklist.
The Quality Assurance Summit is also part of activities marking Pinecrest Healthcare Limited’s 20th anniversary and is being presented as the company’s contribution to strengthening the standards of medical laboratory practice in Nigeria.
Onyia said Pinecrest intended to make the Quality Assurance Summit an annual event.
He invited members of the media to attend and engage with healthcare professionals, speakers and representatives of Pinecrest Healthcare on issues concerning laboratory quality and patient care.
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The event, he said, would also provide an opportunity for the media to highlight the importance of reliable diagnostics and the role laboratory quality plays in strengthening Nigeria’s healthcare system.
The summit will hold on Saturday, October 10, 2026, at 11:00 a.m. It will be a hybrid event, with the physical session scheduled to take place at Welcome Center Hotel, International Airport Road, Lagos, while the virtual component will be hosted via Zoom.
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