AARYAN SHARMA
JAMMU: The State Health Department may have announced a crackdown on illegal private clinics of corporate hospitals to prevent gullible patients from being taken for a ride but the same department is keeping its eyes and ears shut when it comes to mushrooming of sub-standard pathological labs where untrained staff is playing with the lives of seriously ill patients.
Though promoters of these newly opened pathological labs have spent huge amount of money on decorating their interiors but when it comes to investing in ‘ human capital’ they have failed in their duty to hire well trained and experienced health care workers to run their laboratories. In some cases, these laboratories are running the show on borrowed pathologists from established labs.
The collection centres of these laboratories are mostly manned by unqualified staff and most of the times they destroy the samples of patients leading to poor test reports and poor diagnosis.
There is no dearth of case studies where patients come out unhappy after screening and undergoing numerous tests across these pathology labs.
Official sources in the Health Department claimed these labs have not been transparent in submitting details of employees working in their labs.
“If we want to satisfy and verify the credentials of technicians we are not given free access to their records. We have no mechanism in place where we can independently verify the credentials of technicians and ensure patients are not taken for a ride by these centres”, a health official responsible for inspection of these centres said.
A senior official of the State Health Department said in several of these laboratories either the government health employees are registered as their pathologists or some private practitioners are enrolled as their support /technical staff and continue to work across more than one laboratory.
Official sources said, “There is no check on these malpractices and the end result is health of local residents of Jammu is taken for a ride by these laboratories in the name of providing better health care services at exorbitant prices”.
