Dengue test: Private labs fleecing people

SNS, Siliguri, 30 October 2014: Despite the Darjeeling district health department's order issued to private clinics and pathological labs asking them to charge Rs 500 for dengue screening, the private facilities are charging people anything between Rs 700 and Rs 1,100 for the tests, it is learnt. 

Following the detection of some suspected dengue cases in Siliguri, district health department officials held a review meeting with representatives of private nursing homes in Siliguri on 26 October. 

After the meeting, the district chief medical officer of health, Dr Asit Biswas, had said the cost of one such test in private facilities had been slashed down to Rs 500. This correspondent today visited some private clinics and laboratories and enquired about the rates, only to find that most of them were not following the health department directives. “We are conducting the test at Rs 700 because we are not aware of any such decision (taken by the health department),” a lab technician claimed. 

When asked, Dr Biswas said he would look into the matter. Meanwhile, the director of health services, Dr Biswaranjan Satpathy, held a meeting with Siliguri Municipal Corporation (SMC) officials here today on the suspected dengue cases. 

“A house-to-house fever survey will begin in the affected wards from Saturday, while the health department will continue monitoring other wards too. It has been decided that the health department will provide fogging machines to the SMC. The health department will provide Rs 4,30,000 to the SMC for the job. We will also provide 30 health workers to the SMC for the survey,” Dr Satpathy said. 

Civic body commissioner Sonam Wangdi Bhutia said they had requested the health department to provide a vehicle-mounted fogging machine. “The fever survey and awareness programmes will be intensified in wards 7,8 and 9 and later it would be carried out in wards 4,5,6,29,31,41,44 and 46. If needed, it will be conducted in wards 42 and 43 too,” he said.