Hospital obtains TB testing machine

 PATIENTS tested for tuberculosis will get their results within two hours – not a week as in the past.
This will be made possible by a new tuberculosis geneXpert building under construction at the Kundiawa general hospital.
Chief executive officer Mathew Kaluvia said the hospital bought a new TB geneXpert machine for K70,000 last year.
He said no other public hospital in the country had the machine which could diagnose TB virus within two hours.
Kaluvia said in the past it used to take about a week to detect TB after going through various processes using other old machines.
“This machine is very powerful and can detect hidden TB very quickly and it saves time and make work of the doctors and lab technicians easy,” he said.
He said between last August and January, they used the new machine and conducted 200 tests at the hospital and discovered two new drug-resistant cases in Chimbu.
Kaluvia said in the past, it was very hard to detect drug-resistant cases.
Kaluvia commended the hospital management and board for making a right decision to buy the new machine and build a separate building for TB cases.
He said TB was a silent killer and such machine would be used to save many lives in the province and contain the spread of TB.
He said a specialist doctor at the hospital would be in charge of the new building and machine.