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| Unkept promise leaves Jammu without viral testing lab | | | Early Times Report
JAMMU, Apr 12: Though successive state governments make several announcements and promises for the welfare of the people but most of the times promises are never kept making a mockery of peoples' aspirations.
One such promise of establishing viral testing laboratories- one each at Jammu and Srinagar- made about six years ago is yet to be completely fulfilled since Jammu is still waiting for a viral testing laboratory. In reply to a calling attention notice of CPI (M) MLA Mohammad Yusuf Tarigami in the State Legislative Assembly on March 31 last, the Health and Medical Education Minister Lal Singh said that the two H1N1 testing laboratories in Srinagar and Jammu will be established shortly. However, he did not mention a time frame.
While the H1N1 viral testing laboratory was established at SKIMS, Srinagar, the demand for a similar facility at Jammu was ignored.
It may be recalled that almost similar assurance was made by the then Health Minister Sham Lal Sharma in the month of August 2009 when Swine Flu pandemic broke out in Jammu and its peripheries.
Sham Lal had promised to establish two such laboratories at Sher-e-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences (SKIMS), Srinagar and the other at Microbiology Laboratory, Government Medical College and Hospital (GMC&H), Jammu.
The interests of Jammu people was ignored due to which the Jammuites suffered a lot earlier this year as the threat of Swine Flu loomed large over several parts of Jammu region.
In absence of a testing laboratory at Jammu, the people, who were in panic after some cases had been detected positive for Swine Flu, had to rely on testing laboratories outside of Jammu.
The Swine Flu has already been declared as dreaded droplet infection, however, the health department authorities slept over the matter.
Health experts told Early Times that no scientific mechanism has been put in place so far in Jammu to check the spread of epidemics like Swine Flu adding that the tackling such pandemics should be given top priority but the situation is vice versa.
They said that a sense of fear and panic play havoc among the masses whenever epidemics like Swine Flu break out as such a viral testing laboratory should have been established with their reach.
The health experts further said that to subsidize the impact of such pandemics, the successive state governments have miserably failed in their duties to galvanize the health care system due to lack of well equipped "Epidemiology Department" at District levels in order to provide the testing facilities and proper medicines.
They suggested that government should create an independent Directorate of Epidemiology so as to streamline the system particularly in case of emergencies.
While referring to the commitments made by the Ministers, a senior citizen and social activist Dr Gurmeet Singh said that assurances of the government never stand with the aspirations of the people because there is no comprehensive policy being adopted by whichever dispensation is at the helm of affairs to handle dreaded droplet epidemics which spread in a sporadic way across the country. |
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