Laboratory medicine is an integral part of healthcare, the accuracy and reliability of medical laboratory examination results are vital part in healthcare delivery, and these plus the effective operation of laboratories are the main stay of health services.
The June 2010 edition of the journal has several original articles from laboratory medicine. The article on routine antenatal syphilis screening in southwest Nigeria – a questionable practice; is one that is being debated, the rational of performing routine antenatal syphilis screening depends on the prevalence of syphilis in the antenatal population. The authors in this study got a low prevalence of syphilis using the Venereal Disease Research Laboratory (VDRL) test. This would imply either a low sensitivity of the test method or an actual low prevalence. The authors rightly concluded that diagnostic tests with higher sensitivity may be necessary before discontinuing the traditional screening methods.