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Concern over HIV testing kits

Deepa H Ramakrishnan

Laboratories must take extra care, says expert

PONDICHERRY: Concern over the quality of testing kits used for conducting HIV tests by small private laboratories was voiced at a two-day workshop organised by JIPMER on External Quality Assurance Scheme (HIV) phase III for medical officers and laboratory technicians.

Participants at the workshop, inaugurated on Monday, wanted to know if the kits, which were distributed within the country after being certified by the NACO, would be re-certified in Pondicherry before their use.

"Government testing labs get re-certified kits from the Pondicherry AIDS Control Society but the small private laboratories don't. Even if a kit is faulty they sometimes still continue to use it. This despite the fact that an erroneous result could cause problems for the patient as well as the lab," said S.C. Parija, Head, Department of Microbiology, JIPMER. One kit with 96 tests cost around Rs. 6,000.

Apart from the Voluntary Counselling and Testing Centres (VCTC) and the State Referral Centre in JIPMER, there are over a hundred private laboratories in Pondicherry.

"Around 15,000 to 20,000 people undergo the test for HIV a year and 600 to 800 new HIV positive cases are detected among them. When there is an error in the result, it will be traumatic for the person because of the social stigma attached to the condition. Laboratories therefore must be accurate," said Gilbert Fernandes, Project Director, Pondicherry AIDS Control Society.

Dr. Parija, whose paper dealt with the essential components of quality control, said that it was necessary to take extra care to avoid errors while testing. Other papers that were presented included mother to child transmission and prevention, paediatric AIDS, epidemiology of AIDS, structure and replication of HIV, clinical manifestation of HIV/AIDS in adults and anti retroviral therapy.

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