District Health Department Visits Private Hospitals and Labs to Address Seasonal Diseases

Gadwal: Under the instructions of District Medical and Health Officer, Dr. S.K. Siddappa, the district health department staff visited several private hospitals and laboratories across Jogulamba Gadwal district to discuss measures for addressing seasonal diseases. During these visits, the officials provided various recommendations to the administrators of private hospitals and lab technicians.

Private lab technicians were advised not to declare cases of malaria, dengue, and chikungunya as positive based solely on the Kit Method Test. Instead, cases that test positive through this method should be sent to TD-Hub. At TD-Hub, dengue cases should be confirmed using the ELISA test, malaria cases through the slide method, and chikungunya cases via the RTPCR test. Only after these confirmatory tests show positive results should the cases be declared as positive, and only qualified doctors should provide treatment for these cases.

The officials also instructed that all private diagnostic centers must clearly display the names of the tests and their price lists.

Furthermore, it was emphasized that every private health facility must display their registration certificate, biomedical certificate, and pollution certificate. Additionally, fire safety measures such as fixing fire safety cylinders to the walls of the labs should be strictly adhered to.

Administrators of private hospitals, nursing homes, clinics, polyclinics, labs, and diagnostic centers in Jogulamba Gadwal district were instructed to report details of cases related to seasonal diseases such as malaria, dengue, chikungunya, and acute diarrheal diseases to the district health department office daily using Annexure-1 form.

All private health facility administrators were instructed to maintain records as per the Standard Operating Procedure (SOP). Failure to do so could result in action being taken under the Clinical Establishment Act-2010 and its 2011 rules.

The district health department team that conducted these visits included K. Madhusudhan Reddy (i/c Dy.Demo), M. Ramakrishnudu (CHO), and Chinni Krishna.