Gästblogg: Can you imagine a World where the Biomedical Scientists and their laboratories don’t exist?

On the 15th of April, we celebrate the day of our Profession, a very active, brilliant and cutting edge one. Biomedical Scientists are a group of highly educated health professionals, with Bachelors, Master and PhD degrees that contribute in a unique way for the detection, screening, treatment and monitoring of non-communicable diseases.

Fernando Mendes

According to the World Health Organization, …”non-communicable diseases, also known as chronic diseases, tend to be of long duration and are the result of a combination of genetic, physiological, environmental and behaviours factors. The main types of non-communicable diseases are cardiovascular diseases (like heart attacks and stroke), cancers, chronic respiratory diseases (such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and asthma) and diabetes”…

The numbers associated with this type of pathologies are frightening, 41 million people die each year, representing 71% of all deaths globally. 15 million people died from some non-communicable diseases between the ages of 30 and 69 years (WHO, 2018).
Cardiovascular diseases account for most non-communicable deaths, or 17.9 million people annually, followed by cancers (9.0 million), respiratory diseases (3.9million), and diabetes (1.6 million).

Can you imagine a World where the Biomedical Scientists and their laboratories don’t exist?
The success of medicine nowadays, patient survival, as well as their quality of life, are linked to the thousands of results that every day are produced in laboratories with quality assurance.
Many lab tests are the result of Biomedical Science research that started at Higher Education Institutions or independent research labs, involving Biomedical Scientists and due to translational medicine make part of the laboratory routine.

Biomedical scientist’s role is fundamental in the Health Care System and in the daily life of people, to acknowledge this is essential, by combining the International Day of Biomedical Laboratory Sciences with awareness campaigns of non-communicable diseases around in Europe once detection, screening, treatment and monitoring makes part of our professional DNA.
Long and successful life to this vivid profession!

Fernando Mendes
President European Association for Professionals in Biomedical Science (EPBS)