CLOSER SCRUTINY: A lab assistant at work in a diagnostic lab in the city. — Photo: Satish H.

HYDERABAD : Are you sure of your blood group? Because, nowadays, a few in the city are confident from where an accurate blood group test is available.

Incidences of conflicting blood evaluations from separate labs are increasing.

There is this woman who has been told by a lab near BHEL that her blood group is A+, while another lab in the same locality said it is B+! Advised by doctors for blood transfusion, her dilemma is, which lab is right?

The repercussions of she believing one of these labs and going for further treatment are open to imagination.

Not just blood tests, but several diagnostic examinations necessary for treatment of various ailments are turning out to be erroneous because of flawed labs in the city. Moreover, hardly 10 out of 1,500-plus labs here have any certified proof of technical competence.

Ill-equipped

The flaws are manifold. From lack of trained technicians and adequate equipment, to absence of Government monitoring or even dearth of statutory rules. In fact, the State Government in 2002 passed a legislation to make at least registration of such labs mandatory.

Inexplicably, no Government order was issued in this regard till date. Though the city-based Medically Aware and Responsible Citizens of Hyderabad (MARCH) too initiated efforts in 2002 to inject reliability into labs by campaigning for accreditation from the National Accreditation Board for Testing and Calibration Laboratories (NABL), the crusade fell apart after an energetic start.

So far, only 10 diagnostic centres here have procured NABL accreditations. These include Vimta Labs, where commoners do not go for blood tests. Of the rest, some are corporate hospitals. Labs we find in small lanes of the city, where most people go, have either not heard or bothered about NABL.

No qualified staff

Most of these labs, functioning from grimy, single-room shacks, do not have even a single qualified, full-time pathologist.

They make do with 10th Class failures who pass off as technicians. This, when they should have a team of pathologists, each with expertise in particular fields like tissue pathology, immunology, haematology or transfusion and so on.

"None of these labs can function if you insist on qualified technicians, the lack of trained manpower is that big," remarks K. Suresh of Osmania Medical College Doctors' Forum. "A regulatory mechanism for labs with qualified technical manpower is the need of the hour," feels A.Y. Chary, superintendent of Gandhi Hospital.

That is for the Government to ensure. Till then, from being a patient for one lab, you continue being normal for another lab. That too, in the days of HIV!

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