Civil hospital running out of blood test equipment, short on funds too

Ludhiana: There is a shortage of reagents— a substance for chemical analysis which is widely used in blood tests of patients— at civil hospital. There is also an acute shortage of other necessary laboratory requirements, including glass tubes.
As per the sources, the hospital is also running low on reagents used for conducting Complete Blood Count (CBC) tests and have limited test cards for diagnosing Hepatitis B and C. Sodium fluoride test tubes, which are especially used for testing glucose level in blood, are also not enough in number.

One of the sources in the hospital said the absence of reagents has rendered the machines used for chemical analysis useless. The sources added that the tests which were earlier done by the machines and simply took minutes, now take more than an hour. The making of the reports also take up a lot of time due to delivery of the same gets delayed. Harbhajan Kaur, who came from Sahauli, said she had to come all the way from her house to collect reports after submitting the tests a day before. She added that she had to leave her granddaughter behind alone at her house.

As per the sources, the laboratory staff are forced to use limited number of glass test tubes by washing and incubating it. When the reagents were available, a staff member was able to carry out nearly 200 daily diagnostic lab tests on a daily basis, whereas now even two staff persons are only able to carry out 100 to 120 blood tests. On asking about the accuracy of the results, it was added that the machines are precise in showing the results and are more accurate than manual procedure.

Senior medical officer Dr Geeta said the hospital is short of funds and has been trying to manage the available resources to their best. “As soon as the funds will be allotted to us, we will arrange the same for the hospital. The matter has been taken up with the civil surgeon.”

Civil surgeon Dr Parvinder Singh Sidhu said they have written to National Heath Mission authorities who assign funds for running the hospital. The hospital authorities were about to receive the funds on March 31, but did not. “Due to shortage of funds, we are unavailable to get the required equipment for the hospital. Due to high influx of patients, the hospital requires higher funds for running efficiently. The problem will be resolved soon.”

Short on ELISA kits

Some days before the hospital was unavailable with ELISA kits which are used for detecting HIV in blood samples before forwarding the same to patients in need.