The National Control Laboratory set up to test drugs and vaccines is likely to begin operation without adequate preparations in January.
The lab has already started testing drugs, pending a formal inauguration, with inadequate manpower but the regular tests would begin in January, the director of the drug administration directorate general, Selim Barami, who is in charge of the lab, told New Age.
‘We have sought permission to the formal inauguration on January 1 but yet we are yet to get any reply,’ he said.
Lab officials said that they had started with no separate allocation for buying reagents and other things required.
They also said that they could not run the lab well as no experts have been appointed at eh lab to run high-tech equipment.
The lab now runs under the Institute of Public Health, which is paying for the day-to-day expenses and supplies chemicals and other materials, an official said.
Barami said that they would start testing vaccines on a trial basis in January. ‘We cannot say anything specifically about the lab capacity as we have no experience of testing vaccines. Vaccine tests are also time-consuming.’
The lab, which the government set up with the help of the World Bank and the World Health Organisation, was supposed to start functioning towards the end of 2012, project officials said.
The ministry allocated Tk 140 million and the World Bank Tk 110 million in donation for the establishment of the lab.
The appointment of expert manpower at the lab is being delayed because of the government negligence, drug administration officials said.
A fire incident took place in the lab damaging some cables which took six months to be repaired as there is no separate allocation for the lab, they said.
Barami said that the lab now has 73 officials and they had sought 236 members on the lab stuff from the health ministry.
The drug administration sent an organogram to the health ministry which was pending with the public administration ministry. It was then sent to the finance ministry for approval, drug administration officials said.
‘It is a long process. We do not know when we will get the required manpower,’ Barami said.
MAB Siddique, an analyst at the lab, said that with the existing facilities in Dhaka, only 3,000 drug samples could be tested in a year.
With the new lab functioning, an estimated 10,000 samples could be tested a year, Siddique added.
Courtesy of New Age
