Good news for the Meerut city and especially for TB patients and the city got its first Culture and Drug Sensitivity Lab to test the adverse drug reactions on Tuberculosis patients. The lab was established at Lala Lajpat Rai Memorial (LLRM) Medical College of the city.
The budget allocated to set up the state-of-the-art laboratory is Rs 64 lakh and setup in the Microbiology department of the college. It is the third such laboratory in a state-run hospital of Uttar Pradesh.
Before this lab, the collected samples of TB patients were sent to Agra, the Intermediate Referral Laboratory and two weeks or even a month took to get the final report to come. 39 districts are connected to Agra laboratory for TB testing and due to that much samples, time taken by the laboratory is genuine but from now on, the waiting time will be reduced to only three days.
UP state tuberculosis officer Dr. Santosh Gupta told to the media that this will help the city to treat TB patients quickly and this becomes the third laboratory in the UP state-run hospital and the others are in Lucknow and Agra, which are connected to 36 and 39 districts respectively.
The state government has set up the infrastructure and a global non-profit organization Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics (FIND) given the machinery.
Dr Amit Garg, head, Microbiology department, LLRM Medical College said that as for now, the staff of six members are recruited at the laboratory including a senior lab technician. They have got training from National Tuberculosis Institute (Bangalore) and National Jalma Institute of Leprosy and other Mycobacterial Diseases (Agra) except the lab technician.
