The Medical Laboratory Science Council of Nigeria has denied three universities and two colleges of technology accreditation to run programmes in Medical Laboratory Science.

The five institutions have therefore been de-accredited with immediate effect.

Among them are Ambrose Alli University, Ekpoma, in Edo State; Rivers State University of Science and Technology, in Port Harcourt and Babcock University, in Ilisan-Remo, Ogun State.

The Registrar/Chief Executive Officer of MLSCN, Prof. Anthony Emeribe, disclosed this in an interview with The PUNCH in Abuja during  the Medical Laboratory Science Education workshop.

The workshop was organised for about 120 participants drawn from 19 universities and colleges of technology running degree and diploma programmes in Medical Laboratory  Science.

He said, "For our assessment tool for the universities’ Bachelor of Medical Lab programme or diploma programme in colleges of health technology, there are three levels of performance.

"For institutions that perform at the level of 70 per cent and above, they get full accreditation and a revisit comes after five years. For institutions that score 60-69 per cent, they get partial accreditation and we revisit them after two years. For institutions that fall below 60 per cent, they are denied accreditation.

"Presently, we have three universities we have denied accreditation and two colleges of health technology that we have denied accreditation.”

Emeribe stated that although the MLSC had graduated some students from AAU, Ekpoma "at the recent reaccreditation visit, they were found not to have met the requirement for accreditation and so the Universities are now working hard to tune up the quality before our revisit for us to read reaccredit them.”

According to him, it has become pertinent for the council to harmonize the processes, procedures, yardsticks and parameters deployed by those who represent council in the conduct of its programmes.