Thursday, November 12, 2009

PCR for H1N1

I am a laboratorian, I know the techniques and I know the prices of the used materials very well.The minister of health has nothing to do with the lab work except that his council is the chairman of El-Borg laboratories. So, he started to announce every where that only the fever hospitals are the authorized places to do the confirmatory test for H1N1 & people should not rush to private laboratories because they are doing only a rapid screening test that has many fallacies.Fine, few weeks later, things got beyond limits and the fever hospitals can't accommodate all those sick patients, so he had to open it for the private labs!! Here comes the business: 1) He said that not all the labs have the facilities. Correction: any lab that performs hepatitis B or C viruses tests can do H1N1 on the same machine. And of course more than 50 % of the Egyptian laboratories perform hepatitis virus analysis. 2) He said that the price should be ranging 1200 - 1500 L.E, Correction: THIEVES!!! The actual cost of the test is about 600 L.E max, so they can't take 100 % profit! 3) My analysis, is that all this is in favor of few large laboratories, one of them with its chairman working as the council of the minister and the other one with its owner who appears daily on T.Vs and she is an important highly connected member of the national democratic party!! 3amar ya masr