Cashing in on panic

According to the Government of India's clinical management protocol of pandemic influenza H1N1, not all patients need medical care

New Delhi: Delhi has managed to avert a high death toll caused by swine flu, but is grappling with another problem. According to the Government of India's clinical management protocol of pandemic influenza H1N1, not all patients need medical care. Those with mild fever, cough, sore throat, body ache, nausea and diarrhoea do not even require to get themselves tested for the virus. But in a blatant violation of the protocol, many private hospitals recommend tests, medicines and even hospitalisation, says JasvinderPaintal, doctor at Indraprastha Apollo. Physicians charge at least Rs 1,500 per visit. Visiting a patient in ICU is costlier.

Private laboratories are also taking advantage of the situation to make money. Till the first week of February, Sequence Lab was charging Rs 3,500 for swine flu test, while Dr Dang's Lab was charging Rs 9,000. On February 18, Director General of Health Services Jagdish Prasad wrote to the Delhi government, asking it to ensure that government-authorised private labs do not overcharge patients. Following this, Delhi capped the cost of swine flu test at Rs 4,500. But pathologists say the cost could have been much lower.Most laboratories in Delhi have imported machines from the US-based Applied Biosystems and use its reagent kit; the cost of the test comes to nearly Rs 1,900, says a pathologist of Ram Manohar Lohia hospital, nodal government hospital for swine flu in Delhi.

Director of Genome Diagnostics Pradeep Singhal says if indigenous technology is used, the cost can be reduced further. "We produced a kit in 2009, which worked on multiple machines and the test would not cost over Rs 800," he says. Though the kit was validated by the Sanjay Gandhi Post Graduate Institute of Medical Sciences, Lucknow, in 2009, it is yet to receive manufacturing licence from the Drugs Controller General of India. Singhal alleges that a lobby pushing the purchase of imported machines and kits is the reason indigenous kits are not being promoted.