VIJAYAWADA: With the rise in viral fever cases across Krishna district, Elisa test kits at the sentinel surveillance system lab at the Vijayawada Government General Hospital (GGH), faced shortage in supply.
Reportedly, samples received in the last week of August are being tested currently, due to the low availability. There are two such labs in the district, one at GGH in Vijayawada and the other at the Government District Headquarters hospital in Machilipatnam. However, only the GGH has been performing tests from samples across the district as the other has been non-functional for years.
According to the sources, shortage of test kits arose in August, as a result of which kits had to be brought from GGH in Guntur district. Currently, there are only around eight test kits available in the Vijayawada laboratory. Each kit has 96 test slots from which 94 tests can be conducted. Hence, only 752 further tests will be possible with the available kits. These are supplied from the National Institute of Virology (NIV) Pune, as per the indents provided by the staff of the labs.
The officials, however, denied any shortage of kits. They said that there was only slight delay in receiving them. “There is no shortage of test kits, especially those used for testing dengue. There was a short delay in receiving them. We can get any number of kits as per the indents that we provide to the NIV Pune,” Dr R Lakshmi Kumari, head of Microbiology Department told TNIE.
When the paper asked why samples from August were still getting tested, A Nageswararao, district epidemiologist said, “There a slight shortage of the test kits. Now, only few samples from August remain to be tested, which will be done by Tuesday. We are about to receive 1,000 more test kits this week and another 1,000 this month.”
Across the country, there are 646 sentinel surveillance hospitals (SSH) for dengue and chikungunya. In Andhra Pradesh, there are 19 such hospitals.From January to August 31 this year, 2,415 samples have been examined in Krishna district for Elisa test. Of the total samples, 503 came from private hospitals, 1,894 were from Vijayawada GGH. As many as 99 cases tested positive from the GGH, while the number was 56 from private ones. In the month of September, 356 suspected dengue cases have been tested and 19 have turned out to be positive.
Officials stated that a majority of the private hospitals in the district were conducting NS1 rapid test to confirm fever cases as dengue without sending samples for confirmation. Hence, 503 samples were submitted in over eight months.
Sentinel surveillance
As per the World Health Organisation (WHO), a sentinel surveillance system is used when high-quality data are needed about a particular disease that cannot be obtained through a passive system. It has medical staff sufficiently specialised to diagnose, treat and report cases of the disease. NIV Den MAC Elisa kit Version 2.4 is the type of Elisa kit used in district
Long queue for blood tests at GGH
Owing to the rise in number of viral fever cases in district, long queues were seen in front of the blood test centre at the Vijayawada Government General Hospital (GGH). Speaking to TNIE, P Nancharaiah, Superintendent of GGH said, “A large number of fever cases are coming up daily. Though most of these are viral fever cases, still all necessary tests, including test for dengue, are being conducted”