The establishment of sophisticated laboratories will no longer require human samples to be brought to the capital for testing. Currently the government has a high-tech laboratory only in the capital. [break]
According to officials at the National Public Health Laboratory (NPHL), patients have to wait for a week to get report in the current system. Furthermore, delays in analyzing samples lead to unreliable report.
“Under such circumstances, patients may not get timely medical attention and succumb to diseases,” said Bishnu Prasad Upadhaya, a micro- biologist at NPHL. He said the World Health Organization (WHO) has assisted the Ministry of Health and Population (MoPH) to set up the laboratories. The labs will be set up in zonal hospitals in Dhangadhi and Mahendranagar of the Far- western region. Similarly, zonal hospitals in Surkhet and Nepalgunj have been selected for setting up such laboratories in the Mid-western region.
The Epidemiology and Disease Control Division (EDCD) claimed the laboratories will be set up before the onset of monsoon. “The WHO has already started to procure equipment for the lab. They have assured us that they would provide the equipment to us before the onset of monsoon,” an official at EDCD said.
The laboratory will be equipped to test the human samples for identifying diseases such as cholera, typhoid, diarrhea, dengue, malaria, influenza, dysentery and black fever. The medical staffers at the zonal hospitals of mid and far western regions have been specially trained by NPHL for the operation of the laboratory. “They have been provided special one week training for disease surveillance,” Upadhya said
Two years ago, diarrhea had turned into an epidemic in Jajarkot, Rukum, Surkhet, Kalikot, Salyan, Dailekh, Rolpa, Dolpa and Dang of Mid-West and Doti, Bajura, Accham, Dadeldhura, Kanchanpur and Bajhang districts of Far-Western Region, killing a total of 394 people -- 190 male and 204 female.
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