Medical Laboratory Science

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Education is a mainstay for development and alleviation of rampant problems of a given nation. It can offer opportunities to the citizens of a country to play a pivotal role in bringing and sustaining the required development in various sectors in which the health delivery system is not an exception. The laboratory service as an essential component of the health care delivery system requires properly trained professionals.

In Ethiopia, formal training of laboratory professionals was started in 1954. The pioneers were the then Pasteur institute, Minellik II hospital, Gondar Public Health College and Jimma hospital. Since then laboratory professionals were trained at different levels and assumed positions in various health institutions and contributed significantly to the health care delivery system of the country.Jimma University took the initiative to implement a post basic training, which enabled selected laboratory technology diploma graduates to pursue their first degree. This was followed by a five year BSc degree level training program for generic students under the directives of the Ministry of Education.  The five year program was subjected to series of review process to fit into a new three years training and education policy of the country. 

At present, in Ethiopia, health institutions (hospitals, health centers, regional laboratories, and others), higher institutions (government and private), research institutions and industries that require competent medical laboratory professionals at different level of training and expertise are progressively growing.  As a consequence, ample opportunities are created for medical laboratory science practitioners to play a vital role in the country’s development. However, the input of these professionals to a great extent depends on the quality of education (training) they receive in the higher learning institutions or universities. Recent need assessment carried out by Haramaya University which involves stakeholders, community, Alumni, students and instructors, and the feedback collected by Jimma University from students, external assessors and the university’s experience from the previous 4 and 5 years curricula clearly revealed the requirement of training of competent, compassionate and research oriented medical laboratory science practitioners that have influential analytical thinking and problem solving skills.

Problems identified compromising quality:

ü  Little time for practical activity

ü  Credit hours of core professional courses reduced

ü  High credit hour load in most semesters stressing students and affecting their performance

ü  Problems related with placement of large number of students

The cumulative effect coupled with scarcity of resources (laboratories, equipment, reagents, classrooms, teaching aids, etc.) ultimately compromised both the effectiveness of the teaching-learning process and the quality/competence of graduates. These necessitated among others to review the currently existing training program. Hence, MLS department is obliged to design a new curriculum so as to train well-skilled medical laboratory science practitioners who would play a significant role in improving health laboratory services in Ethiopia.

The Federal Ministry of Education (MOE) coordinated different levels of meetings/workshops to have a nationalized curriculum in all Universities. As a result, the 4-year draft curriculum was produced finalized at a National workshop organized by the MoE, in which nine universities providing medical laboratory science training presented and critically reviewed the document. With the intention of creating common framework for Ethiopian public universities which are going to implement the modular approach by the year 2005 E.C, a guideline is developed by a consortium of six Universities, namely, Bahir Dar, Debre Berhan, Debre Markos, Haramaya, Hawassa, and Jimma Universities, This effort was organized by Higher Education Strategy Center (HESC), Ministry of Education.

Thus, this nationally harmonized modularized curriculum was prepared by faculties from the eight public universities which have Medical Laboratory Science BSc programs; namely Addis Ababa University, Arbaminch University, Haramaya University, Hawassa University, Jimma University, University of Gondar, Wollo University, and Wollega University. 

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