HISTORY OF MEDICAL LABORATORY SCIENCE IN NIGERIA

MLS IN NIGERIA: THE STORY SO FAR (PART 1) 

MLS has evolved from Laboratory Technician through Technologist to the Medical Laboratory Scientist of today. This is in consonance with the humble beginning of all professional groups e.g. Medicine started as an apprenticeship course and gradually developed into a diploma programme before the current degree programme. In Nigeria, the Yaba College of Technology and Kano Royal School of Hygiene trained and awarded diploma to the initial sets of medical doctors. Similarly, Pharmacists were trained as diploma holders until the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife introduced the degree programme.
Rudimentary MLS education in Nigeria started in 1920. In those early days the responsibilities of Nigerians in the historical laboratories as they were then known were very minimal, mainly running errands for the colonial laboratory technician who was invariably a demobilized serviceman from the British Army Medical Corps of World War 1. These sets of Nigerians had little or no formal education and were known as laboratory boys.

MLS IN NIGERIA: THE STORY SO FAR (PART 2)

By 1940 the situation had greatly improved and the then African staffers of the hospital laboratory (consisting of nationals of the then British and West Africa) were categorized into laboratory attendants (the lab boys and the laboratory technician assistants, who were the better educated ones). This later group could perform urine and stool analysis, bacteriological examination of urethra smears, sputum and pregnancy tests by the male-toad technique popularly known as MTT
By 1948 the first formal and full-time training school had come into existence, admitting trainees with a minimum entry qualification of Cambridge School Certificates or its equivalent for a three-year course. This led to increase in the number of towns in the country having hospital laboratories. It’s worthy of note to say that, the syllabus of this training course had since been elevated to the standard, which was obtained in the UK for laboratory technicians.