SUBHASH MISHRA
Dhanbad, April 19: The RT-PCR test of Covid- 19 samples from six districts has been badly affected owing to the technical staff crunch at Shahid Nirmal Mahto Medical College Hospital (SNMMCH) Dhanbad for the last three weeks.
As per the official record, over 6,000 samples of Dhanbad, Giridih, Jamtara, Dumka, Godda and Deoghar districts are pending for tests. Not only testing of samples, even the data entry of the tested reports are pending.
The crisis appeared after March 31 after the contract of 60 outsourcing technical staff including lab technicians, lab assistants, data operators and others who were deployed in wake of the Corona pandemic, was terminated.
This outsourcing technical staff was appointed under District Mineral Fund Trust (DMFT) and their contract was being extended every three months. Since Covid -19 cases have been completely checked in Dhanbad, DMFT did not renew their contract after March 31.
However, the district health department has continued samples collections of suspected people.
Now, only four regular staff of the microbiology department lab have to carry out all RT-PCR tests of samples besides routine work of the college hospital such as HIV, TB, dengue, malaria, all types of blood classification, and drugs sensitivity test, hepatitis ‘B’ and others.
Since Covid samples tests of all six districts are essential. Lab staff hold up another test to clear the backlog.
“Per day around 150 to 200 samples come from all six districts. Since in wake of staff crunch testing is being conducted in one shift ( 9 am to 5 pm), the number of pending samples have increased”, said a senior authority of SNMMCH.
The college authority said that the district health department, concerned officers of District Disaster Management and state headquarters have been duly informed about the pending samples due to a staff crunch in the lab.
District Integrated Diseases Surveillance Programme (IDSP) officer Rajkumar Singh, who was on leave, said SNMMCH authorities have not informed them about this crisis to the health department. “However, only 59 samples of Dhanbad are pending for the test at SNMMCH. Major samples of Deoghar, Giridih and Dumka are pending and the health department of concerned districts have to solve this problem,” said Dr Singh.
Besides testing of samples, vaccination drives have also been crippled in the Dhanbad district due to contract snapping of outsourcing staff. District nodal officer for vaccination Dr Vikash Rana admitted that the drive has been affected.
In a lack of proper health staff, vaccination among school students through mobile van teams has been suspended and the health department has not fixed vaccination sites in all 10 blocks.
“Ten retrenched employees of outsourcing companies have joined the campaign voluntarily and administering vaccination at IIT ISM market complex. However, despite hands being short, 1200 to 1500 people are being covered per day,” said Dr Vikash Rana.
