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Telangana State to get second swine flu testing facility
In its efforts to reduce pressure on the Institute of Preventive Medicine (IPM), the State government is planning to setup another swine flu testing centre facility at the Sir Ronald Ross Institute of Tropical and Communicable Diseases, also known as Fever Hospital, at Nallakunta in Hyderabad.
Hyderabad: In its efforts to reduce pressure on the Institute of Preventive Medicine (IPM), the State government is planning to setup another swine flu testing centre facility at the Sir Ronald Ross Institute of Tropical and Communicable Diseases, also known as Fever Hospital, at Nallakunta in Hyderabad.
According to sources, a high-level meeting was held recently with the Principal Secretary (Health) Rajeshwar Tiwari in view of rising swine flu cases in the neighbouring States including Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra. As many as 2,805 cases were reported in Karnataka while Maharashtra reported the largest number of confirmed swine flu cases (4,011) and deaths (409) whereas in Tamil Nadu, 2,969 cases were reported. The Principal Secretary reportedly directed the officials to be prepared if there was an outbreak of the disease in the State as well.
Health officials said four months beginning from September were crucial for the Health Department as swine flu cases were likely to go up with the sudden change in the weather conditions.
As of now, there is only one swine flu testing facility in Telangana. The facility - IPM - had been receiving around 180 samples from government and private hospitals daily that burden the centre as it had insufficient staff, said the official.
Due to this, there was no testing of samples on Sundays at IMP and subsequently, the doctors have to wait for another day for confirmation of swine flu. Fever Hospital gets 25 per cent of samples from government hospitals. The months of September, November and December are peak season for swine flu cases, according to Health officials.However, the Fever Hospital has testing facility for swine flu samples, but it needs testing kits. The National Institute of Virology (NIV) of Pune supplies the kits to the hospital.
In fact, till June, the IMP did swine flu tests for free of cost for both samples form government and private hospitals. As per the guidelines, the private hospitals must send samples after admitting the patient. But, taking advantage of the free testing facility, some private hospitals have been allegedly sending samples even without admitting patients. In July last, the government directed the IPM to charge Rs 3,500 for testing a swine flu samples. As a result, the samples coming from private hospitals came down to 50 percent.
Dr Subbalakshmi, Joint Director, Epidemics, told The Hans India that they were conducting many awareness programmes about swine flu with Information, Education and Communication (IEC) materials that created lot of knowledge in public.
“With this, the public are visiting hospitals with symptoms of swine flu. Till today, as many as 17 deaths were reported in Telangana since the beginning of the year,” she said.
By V Naveen Kumar
