ES Reporter

NAHARLAGUN, Apr 30: The long-awaited state’s own Covid-19 sample testing lab at the Tomo Riba Institute of Health & Medical Sciences (TRIHMS) was inaugurated today by the Minister for Health & Family Welfare Alo Libang.
Terming it as a great achievement for the state’s health sector, Libang while informing that the team of doctors from TRIHMS has worked day & night to install the lab in a record time of four weeks, added that the lab will start functioning from Thursday evening itself. The Minister asserted that installation of the lab will be a great relief for the state’s health fraternity who till now had to send samples in Guwahati or Dibrugarh. “It will help the department in saving both time and finances and the current capacity of testing 100 samples a day will be increased if required,” he stated.
The Minister reiterated that state government is extending full support to fight the pandemic and the process of installing two more similar labs at Naharlagun and Pasighat is also on. He further informed that besides meeting the state’s own needs, the lab will also offer testing services to the nearby districts of Assam if they require. “We cannot differentiate anyone based on districts or states since healthcare services are humanitarian in nature,” Libang said.
Elaborating on the state’s first Covid-19 testing lab, its Nodal Officer Dr. Mika Umpo informed that it has the facility of Real-Time- Reverse Transcription-Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) which is most hi-tech & advanced in nature and installing it was a great challenge keeping in mind the ongoing lockdown. "Earlier, we decided to bring the Bio-safety Cabinet, RT-PCR equipment from Kolkata through air services, but due to some technical reasons we had to change the plan and bring it from Hyderabad, that too via road and we are thankful to the state government and the West Bengal Liver Foundation for their contributions in procuring the RT-PCR equipment," Dr. Umpo stated. He also highlighted the role played by the state’s leaders who were in constant touch with the concerned authorities to ease transportation bottlenecks.

“The lab has already passed the quality test under guidance of ICMR and with its installation, TRIHMS is now not only a sample collection centre but also a Covid-19 detection centre and besides coronavirus, in future, it can be used for testing of various infections or epidemics just by calibrating the equipment according to the nature of virus,” the Nodal Officer informed. 
Among others, MLA Boleng Ojing Tasing, Secretary Health P Pratiban, OSD Mamta Riba, Director of DHS Dr. M Lego, Director TRIHMS  Dr. Moji Jini, CMS Dr Hage Amping and other officials were present on the occasion.

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Kenter Joya Riba

(Managing Editor)
      She is a graduate in Science with post graduation in Sociology from University of Pune. She has been in the media industry for nearly a decade. Before turning to print business, she has been associated with radio and television.
Email: kenterjoyaz@easternsentinel.in / editoreasternsentinel@gmail.com
Phone: 0360-2212313

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