School of Medical Lab. Science

The National health act has set out minimum number of Medical Laboratory Scientists in health institutions to compliment the healthcare delivery services. The minimum number of Scientists in each health institution is contingent on the bed capacity of the institution. The number of Medical Laboratory Scientists (MLS) in Hospitals in the northwest geopolitical zone is far below the minimum requirement as outlined.

This glaring imbalance necessitated contacts with relevant institutions and organs with a view to addressing the imbalance in the hospitals and the other health and allied institutions in the Northern Nigeria. The result of these is the establishment of the School as the First in the whole region by the authorities of the Usmanu Danfodiyo University Sokoto in 2002/2003 academic session with a total number of twenty (20) pioneer students enrolled for the programme. Precisely, the instrument given birth to the School was the 225^th Senate meeting of Wednesday, 30^th July, 2003. NUC granted full accreditation in 2005 while the MLSCN granted its accreditation in 2006. The School graduated its first batch of pioneer 11 graduands in 2008. Currently, the School has about 635 undergraduate students. It had so far graduated about 384 MLS in different specialties. It was upgraded to the status of a Faculty upon approval by Senate at its 275^th meeting held on Wednesday, 9^th January, 2013. This effectively replaced the word “School” with “Faculty” in the nomenclature. This was however reversed following the request from NUC on lack of resource verification of the Faculty status.

The School has five academic Departments namely: Chemical Pathology, Haematology, Histopathology, Medical Microbiology and Immunology. These departments are serviced by senior permanent academic staff across the University Faculties, adjunct, receptor/associate staff from Usmanu Danfodiyo University Teaching Hospital. The School has, since its inception, graduated seven (11) sets with a total of 468 Medical Laboratory Scientists in the various specialties.

With satisfactory performance reached by the School in Master of Science (M.Sc..) training, the senate of the University recently approved the commencement of Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) training in all the 5 Specialties of Medical Laboratory Sciences.