If you have fever and want to avoid the endless wait for blood report, which will say whether your system has been invaded by the malarial parasite, there is help at hand.
For just Rs30 you can get an antigen detection kit, which will detect in 15 minutes whether there is malarial parasite in your blood. The test can be carried out at home, but it has to be done under the supervision of a trained laboratory technician or a paramedic.
The kits, manufactured by a Navi Mumbai-based firm, have been procuredby H (West) ward in Bandra, K (West) ward in Andheri (West), K (East) in Andheri (East) and R (Central) ward in Borivli.
“The test can be done at home, but strictly under the guidance of trained personnel. There is a calibration on the strip, and a particular spot to put a drop of the blood sample. There are three bands on the strip. One will show plasmodium vivax and another, plasmodium falciparum. So, the kit can even detect the species of malaria. The third one is a control band, which shows both the species,” GT Ambe, executive health officer, BMC, said.
He added that the kit test is conclusive, and a patient who has taken it need not opt for smear test at the civic-run Kasturba Hospital.
“A layman cannot handle the kit because drawing blood is not that easy. Instead of charging such people Rs30 per kit, the BMC should distribute the kits free to general practitioners. We will do the test on the spot. Municipal hospitals and ward offices should open a counter with a lady technician to deal with this rapid detection system,” Dr Balkrishna Nayak, a general physician from Parel, said.
Tejashree Gupte, microbiologist, Immuno Shop India (P) Ltd, the maker of the kit, said, “It’s not an over-the-counter test. Five micro litre of whole blood and 44 micro litre of assay buffer give results within 20 minutes. If the test returns positive result then the patient is suffering from malaria.”
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