Andhra Pradesh: Swine flu testing centre set up at King George Hospital

Visakhapatnam: A swine flu testing centre (PCR workstation) was made available at the King George Hospital of Visakhapatnam on Friday. Principal secretary of department of health and family welfare Poo-nam Malakondaiah visited the PCR workstation at the KGH, which is the first of its kind in a government hospital in Andhra Pradesh.

Earlier, the swine flu samples needed to be sent to the Sri Venkate-swara Institute of Medi-cal Sciences (SVIMS) in Tirupati or the Institute of Preventive Medicine in Hyderabad. It used to take more than four days to get the results from these institutions, which sometimes delayed the definite diagnosis as well as initiation of targeted treatment in suspected swine flu patients. According to the KGH officials, the new testing centre can deliver the swine flu test result in three hours and it can be communicated within a few minutes to the respective hospital.