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Jan 27, 2016 News
Guyana’s reliance on the Caribbean Public Health Agency (CARPHA) to confirm the presence of emerging viruses could become a thing of the past. And the Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO) is prepared to throw its support behind the Ministry of Public Health to make this a reality.
Speaking at a forum on Monday, PAHO Resident Representative, Dr. William Adu-Krow, said that “I am prepared to speak with CMO (Chief Medical Officer), PS (Permanent Secretary) and the Ministers (of Public Health) on that so that we don’t have to wait on things like that (sample results) if we can do all of the tests here.”
Dr. Adu-Krow qualified his remarks by pointing out that since Guyana is a big country and is not like one of the small islands of the Caribbean “we definitely have to look into building our labs further.”
“There are samples that we could even handle here and I am seriously looking at this and I did speak with CARPHA and they are prepared to train a staff (member) to be able to deal with such cases here… So all that we may need is just the supplies and we can deal with that,” said Dr. Adu-Krow.
His remarks were forthcoming as he addressed Guyana’s limited capabilities to test for viruses such as H1N1 and Zika. The Ministry of Public Health, through support from CARPHA, was able to confirm at least one case of each virus here. While the H1N1 case was believed to have been imported, the Zika case was confirmed in a female who hadn’t travelled overseas during the infectious period.
Chief Medical Officer Dr. Shamdeo Persaud, on Monday disclosed that no additional cases of either of the viruses have been found in these parts. There are, however samples that have been sent to CARPHA for testing.
Following the detection of the viruses the capabilities of the National Public Health Reference
Laboratory was called into question.
At the moment the local laboratory has capacity to test for the H1N1 virus to a limited extent. This translates to the ability to ascertain whether a blood sample tested contains influenza A or B viruses.
Influenza A viruses are known to cause influenza in birds and some mammals and could be transmitted to humans while Influenza B is a type of flu virus that can cause respiratory, fever and stomach symptoms.
“Right now our lab can only take us to the point of deciding whether it is influenza A or B. A is the one that causes H1N1, but the actual typing needs a further test which we will try to work on as time goes by,” Dr. Persaud had related in an earlier interview.
He however revealed that efforts are currently being made to build capacity.
“They are actually putting together a list of what can be done…there were some capacity built for Chikungunya and we did receive the kits, but they were not compatible with some of the machines we had and that was a setback for us,” the CMO admitted. “Hopefully we will get that right and set things in motion,” said Dr. Persaud.
The Caribbean Public Health Agency (CARPHA) in Trinidad has been helping Guyana with the majority of its testing needs. This is due to the fact, Dr. Persaud said that testing for the Zika virus and a few others are particularly challenging for the national laboratory.
“These require a little bit more advanced testing with Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) methodology,” the CMO asserted. Although PCR testing capabilities is available at the national laboratory, Dr. Persaud disclosed that the expertise does not.
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