Postmen to pick and drop TB samples in Lucknow

LUCKNOW: Not just parcels and letters, the sarkari postmen will now be transporting medical samples for the Uttar Pradesh health department.
In an arrangement between the two, postal staff will pick up sputum samples of suspected TB patients from designated microscopy centres and drop them to higher centres for confirmatory and diagnosis related tests.
As of now, proper system to transport the sputum samples is not in place.The patients either carry the samples themselves or health staff take the help of private courier companies. The problem in the present system is that often samples turn dead by the time they reach the higher labs.
“To be rolled out on a pilot basis in 6-8 weeks in four districts, Lucknow, Agra, Badaun and Chandauli, the project aims at streamlining transportation of medical samples to achieve an accurate prevalence of TB in state… the ambiguity on the count contributes to the pool of missing TB cases,” said State TB Officer (STBO) Dr Santosh Gupta.
Data shows that more than 10 lakh TB cases go missing in the country. With the country pledging to eradicate TB by 2025, the campaign against TB - the annual killer of over 55,000 persons in UP.
As per an assessment by the union health ministry, a significant proportion of patients are not tested because the specimen does not reach the laboratory due to non-availability of specimen transport mechanisms.
“Transport of collected specimen also spares the patient’s from travelling to the reference laboratory. Prompt transport of specimen followed by efficacious testing will enable appropriate management of the TB patients and reduced disease transmission,” said an official.
The transportation would begin at the level of primary health centres or the first point of treatment. “Samples collected here would be draped in a three layer packing to ensure that the possible infection inside doesn’t inflict the postman on duty. The packed sample would be dispatched in a thermacol box to higher centres,” explained the STBO.
The samples would be taken first to district centres offering CB NAAT (Cartridge-based nucleic acid amplification test) facility to confirm TB and test if the patient had developed any kind of drug resistance. The positive samples would be further sent to Culture and drug sensitivity testing labs to finalise the course of treatment.
The arrangement also offers a business opportunity to cash starved department of posts. This can be estimated from the fact that UP has a burden of 4.22 lakh TB patients whose sputum samples are to be tested at least once a year. A good number of these patients get checked twice a year. In addition to this, the samples of their close family members are also tested annually to rule out TB.
Agreeing to this, director headquarters, Lucknow region, Krishna Kumar Yadav said: “This is a great idea for it helps us in taking our social responsibility while guaranteeing a revenue support… it appears to a viable model with a promise of growth.”