The Okhmatdyt national children's hospital has received GeneXpert, the equipment for the rapid diagnostics of tuberculosis, HIV infection and viral hepatitis, the chief doctor of the hospital, Iryna Sadovyak, has said.
She said at a briefing on October 18, that the equipment, produced by Cepheid Inc (the United States) and worth $30,000, had been purchased by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) with donor support from the American Chamber of Commerce in Ukraine. She said that that it was already operating in the clinic for the treatment of HIV/AIDS patients and helped detect tuberculosis within a few hours.
"Unfortunately, we have a lot of such children [with tuberculosis], especially in a clinic for HIV-infected people - 30% of them have tuberculosis. Earlier, we had no possibility of making such diagnosis and sent them to a hospital for adults, which created risks of infecting other patients and medical personnel with TB," she said.
In addition, UNICEF purchased part of the reagents for TB diagnostics for the clinic, which will help examine over 400 children for such a disease within a year.
Sadovyak said that the hospital planned to apply to volunteer organizations for the purchase of reagents to diagnose viral hepatitis and a number of other infectious diseases and that it would eventually send an application to the Health Ministry.
"We will ask volunteers first and then we will work with the Health Ministry so that these reagents are purchased, because they are expensive," she said.
In general, about 60 cases of tuberculosis, including 45 extrapulmonary tuberculosis, are diagnosed in the clinic every year
