Lubango - The Central Hospital of Lubango plans to start testing Covid-19 within 15 days, after receiving, on Monday, the PCR-RT device, test materials and pandemic prevention and personal protective equipment.
According to the director-general at the unit, Maria Lina Antunes, who spoke to the press after signing the protocol and receiving the material, are currently making changes in the room for the installation of the equipment donated to the Faculty of Medicine of Mandume University. next week, he said, the cycle of adaptation of hospital professionals to the equipment begins, through online conferences and a digital course with practical classes.
“Within 15 days we will be able to start working effectively, we need eight days to finish the room, with the assembly of the equipment, and eight more days of training ”, he stated. He stressed that the objective is to test and identify patients, facilitating the management of the pandemic, from severe cases to the simplest, making an early diagnosis and isolating the patient, if applicable. The Provincial Health Office will have the mission of determining the testing capacity, as well as defining the diagnosis of the person who should be tested, and Although patients with severe pneumonias are included.
“The hospital has three specialist techniques in molecular biology, two of which will learn to handle the equipment. We will add doctors or professors from the Faculty of Medicine to learn the technique, because at the end of the pandemic the material will return to the institution and enhance research work, using the same PCR technique, aimed at other bacteria ”, he added. for the Administration and Management of UMN, Sebastião António, considered that the hospital is a reference unit, serving, fundamentally, to support the training of doctors. The students of the Faculty of Medicine do the clinical part in the hospital unit. He explained that the equipment comes under a cooperation protocol signed by UMN and the University of Porto, through a strategic partnership with the Biodiversity Research Center.
Research Center in Biodiversity of Porto has predisposed to assist in the training of human resources who will operate the equipment, and the continuity of the tests is the responsibility of the hospital unit and the provincial government, within the strategy to combat the pandemic. The laboratory has capacity to perform 120 tests / day, with results available in 48 hours, all done locally. In addition to the PCR-RT device, specific materials such as swabs, Covid-19 test reagents, gloves, masks and boots for technical personnel, a thousand tests, among others.
Source: Angop
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