Latest TB diagnosis machine installed at BBGH

The training of staff for operating this machine has also begun


Qaiser Shirazi May 19, 2019
PHOTO: AFP

RAWALPINDI: A latest machine for testing Tuberculosis (TB) related diseases has been installed in Benazir Bhutto General Hospital (BBGH).

The machine, GeneXpert, was gifted by the National TB control programme and now one would no longer have to wait for 75 days to get TB report.

The training of staff for operating this machine has also begun. BBGH Medical Superintendent Dr Muhammad Rafiq, when contacted said it was an Eid gift for patients while he disclosed that free testing from it would start from next week.

He added the machine would not only detect the particular disease in a patient but it would also generate a report within two hours. He added the machine would also report whether the prescribed medicine given to a TB patient was effective or not.

Awareness needed to fight tuberculosis

GeneXpert is a small machine, about the size of a microwave oven, that can fit easily on a small table. It has been developed in the United States by a company called Cepheid and an organisation called the Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics (FIND), supported by the American National Institutes of Health.

Pakistan ranks four among countries with high incident cases of multidrug drug resistant TB as estimated 27,000 new cases are reported every year. Total TB cases incidence rate per year is 525,000 in Pakistan while the figure of TB cases under treatment is 368,589 as of data available for the first quarter of the current year.

As many as 160,000 patients are missed from treatment while 56,000 deaths occur due to TB in Pakistan every year. TB Control Programme National Coordinator Aamir Ikram said that 1,571 microscopy centres have been working in the country. He added TB treatment success rate is 93 per cent.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 19th, 2019.

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