Highlights
- Quality assurance during COVID-19 testing is of utmost importance: Expert
- Safety of healthcare workers should be given equal importance: Expert
- Maintain standard procedures and use quality testing kits: Expert
New Delhi: With the central government capping prices for Covid-19 tests, health experts strongly opine on maintaining standard procedures and using quality testing kits. While increasing the tests and capping the prices, the quality of consumables being used in testing coronavirus for collecting samples should not be compromised, they said.
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Dr. Harshal R Salve, associate professor, centre for community medicine at AIIMS said,
Quality assurance during COVID-19 laboratory testing is of utmost important for ensuring correct testing and thus isolation of COVID positive cases. The government has capped the pricing of RT-PCR testing in the interest of the public and also to increase voluntary testing. This should not be taken as an opportunity to compromise the quality of testing especially in private laboratories and hospitals.
Dr S P Byotra, Chairman, internal medicine, Sir Ganga Ram Hospital said,
With price capping for covid test maintaining quality is very important. Safety of healthcare workers is also dependent on their exposure to the virus which directly transcribes from the quality of the virus handling materials specially the viral transport medium which carries the virus as in case of any leakage in the same post collection it becomes dangerous for the spread having loads of live virus in it. So, using quality products for handling covid samples should also be given equal importance in order to reduce infection among healthcare workers.
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It is essential to use viral transport medium (VTM) manufactured in line with USFDA and ICMR standards and using tubes which are completely leak-proof proven. Sub standard quality products puts healthcare workers at risk, so it becomes very important for us to protect our healthcare workers during pandemic by using quality products for sample collection along with stringent parameters,” Anil Hota, CEO of SAR Cellulabs Pvt Ltd, a Gurugram based company which deals in providing consumables for COVID testing. We should aim for enhancing production capabilities abiding to USFDA standards and validating it by ICMR at the most affordable prices.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
NDTV – Dettol Banega Swasth India campaign is an extension of the five-year-old Banega Swachh India initiative helmed by Campaign Ambassador Amitabh Bachchan. It aims to spread awareness about critical health issues facing the country. In wake of the current COVID-19 pandemic, the need for WASH (Water, Sanitation and Hygiene) is reaffirmed as handwashing is one of the ways to prevent Coronavirus infection and other diseases. The campaign highlights the importance of nutrition and healthcare for women and children to prevent maternal and child mortality, fight malnutrition, stunting, wasting, anaemia and disease prevention through vaccines. Importance of programmes like Public Distribution System (PDS), Mid-day Meal Scheme, POSHAN Abhiyan and the role of Aganwadis and ASHA workers are also covered. Only a Swachh or clean India where toilets are used and open defecation free (ODF) status achieved as part of the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014, can eradicate diseases like diahorrea and become a Swasth or healthy India. The campaign will continue to cover issues like air pollution, waste management, plastic ban, manual scavenging and sanitation workers and menstrual hygiene.
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