New Delhi, August 22
With the load mounting for Influenza-A H1N1 testing across India, the government today told the states that they did not require any formal permission from the Centre to allow private labs to screen samples. The government also assured adequate supplies of chemical testing reagents to all designated labs. This means the states can, on their part, identify private screening facilities and get started with sample testing.

“For allowing private facilities to test H1N1 samples, no permission is required from the Government of India,” the health ministry today said. So far, only 23 private labs have been identified across India for H1N1 testing - a very low figure, considering infections have crossed the 2000 mark. The government also has only 22 labs to meet the screening requirements and is reported to be facing a facility crunch due to rise in the demand for sample testing.

That's one reason behind health ministry’s revised H1N1 guidelines which have asked doctors to prescribe Tamiflu to all the patients exhibiting potential swine flu symptoms. Revising its testing protocol earlier this week, the government said medical experts could straightaway put potential patients (with all flu like symptoms and high risk features) on Oseltamivir without asking them to get tested.

The states, however, fear the relaxed norms for Tamiflu use, and have warned the Centre of drug resistance on this count. At the review meeting on H1N1 held here yesterday, almost all states urged the health ministry to revise its stand in the wake of WHO reporting cases of H1N1 developing resistance to Tamiflu due to unregulated use.

West Bengal health minister even referred to the UK, which had first foregone the requirement of testing for prescription of Tamiflu to people with visible infection. “But even the UK had to revise its stand following reports of the virus becoming immune to Tamiflu. In the Indian context, relaxed use of the drug could be dangerous considering there is no alternative treatment line in place,” said the WB representative.

Unlike countries like Australia and UK which have stocked Relenza - the only other known anti-viral for flu viruses - India has so far banked only on Tamiflu for swine flu treatment. States yesterday arrived at a consensus that regulated distribution of Tamiflu was absolutely necessary. The government is procuring additional two crore capsules and four lakh bottles of oseltamivir. “We feel prescription of the drug should follow testing. Its unregulated use could generate drug resistance in the community,” state representatives told The Tribune today.

Meanwhile, Tamil Nadu has identified nine private labs for H1N1 testing and reports of four private labs in Delhi are under validation. That apart, isolation facilities at state levels are still very far and few, with the centre exhorting the states to identify more and invoke provisions of the Epidemic Control Act to ensure that all healthcare facilities spared as many beds in isolation as possible. “We need more isolation facilities than we have. The states have been told to speed up on this front,” health minister Ghulam Nabi Azad said.