Facing flak for absence of swine flu testing facility in Uttarakhand, the Government has initiated the process for setting up a swine flu laboratory in the department of microbiology of the Government Doon Medical College (GDMC) here.
The adviser health services to the Chief Minister, Dr Naveen Baluni told The Pioneer that the process of tender of purchase of machines for the swine flu laboratory has been completed. He claimed that work on setting up a swine flu laboratory in the medical college has started.
Dr Baluni said that initially there was a plan to shift the machines of swine flu laboratory from Government Medical College, Srinagar but it was cancelled due to the fear of wear and tear.
Interestingly, the testing facility for swine flu in the lab of the Srinagar medical college is not being used.
Dr Baluni clarified that the facility may take at least two more months to get operational in GDMC as a swine flu lab is quite elaborate and needs total isolation facility. The samples of suspected patients of the disease are sent to National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), New Delhi due to which the arrival of reports is delayed.
The delay in arrival of reports of swine flu tests from Delhi is causing problems to the health department officials, doctors treating these patients and their anxious family members.
It is learnt that the NCDC is so packed up with samples of suspected patients these days that the process of tests and sending the reports is taking unusually more time.
The delay in arrival of reports has resulted in a situation where either the patients dies or gets recuperated from the disease by the time reports arrives. The sample reports of 11 out of 15 people who have so far lost their lives to the H1N1 infection.
Taking cognisance of the delay in reporting of swine flu samples, Dr Baluni had ordered setting up of swine flu test facility in the GDMC. No report of swine flu was received by the district health department on Tuesday. In-charge of integrated disease Surveillance programme, Dr Puneet Chandra said that the district health department has so far sent samples of 271 suspected patients of the disease to Delhi-based NCDC and out of them 97 cases have been found positive for the disease.
He said that the reports of 47 samples are awaited by the department.
So far, 15 patients have succumbed to swine flu so far out of which ten are from Dehradun; two belonged to Pauri while one each belong to Haridwar and Uttarkashi.