Pri­vate labs have been cash­ing in on dengue test­ing as the in­crease in cas­es has re­sult­ed in more peo­ple seek­ing pri­vate fa­cil­i­ties to de­ter­mine their health sta­tus.

At a press con­fer­ence on Tues­day, the Health Min­istry an­nounced 813 lab­o­ra­to­ry con­firmed cas­es of dengue fever and eight lab­o­ra­to­ry-con­firmed deaths at that time.

The in­crease in test­ing may be sim­i­lar to that of COVID-19 as the Busi­ness Guardian reached out to sev­er­al labs across the coun­try in­clud­ing those in north, south and cen­tral which all con­firmed that with­in the last six weeks they have all seen an in­crease in peo­ple com­ing in to be test­ed for dengue.

Tests range be­tween $125 to $300 de­pend­ing on the lab.

Checks on so­cial me­dia showed that some labs like Nir­vah­na Med­ical Clin­ic in Ch­agua­nas of­fer “rapid dengue tests” which takes around 20 min­utes at $150 or the com­bo with com­plete blood count (CBC) cost­ing $200.

Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Health So­lu­tions Ltd has dengue test­ing avail­able for $150 with al­so dengue and CBC for $220.

Oth­er labs of­fer in­tra­venous flu­ids (drips) with boost­er (BCom­plex) for $300.

Mean­while some labs have ad­ver­tised low prices.

For in­stance, True Care Med­ical Ser­vices Cipero Road, Vic­to­ria Vil­lage, San Fer­nan­do has dengue rapid test for $125, or com­bine with CBC for $215.

One lab in South told the Busi­ness Guardian that when news of dengue was first an­nounced in the coun­try, the num­ber of peo­ple com­ing in for test­ing was less than 10 in two weeks.

“Now that fig­ure has more than quadru­pled, more than ten a week,” the em­ploy­ee said.

This was al­so con­firmed by part share­hold­er of St Au­gus­tine Pri­vate Hos­pi­tal Dr Fuad Khan who is al­so a for­mer health min­is­ter.

“There is an in­crease in peo­ple com­ing in with symp­toms of dengue and there­fore in­creas­ing test­ing of dengue based on the platelets and al­so the im­munoglob­u­lins test and we have seen this in­crease with­in the last cou­ple months in fact with­in the last two months,” Khan ex­plained.

An im­munoglob­u­lins test mea­sures the lev­els of cer­tain an­ti­bod­ies in the blood. Ab­nor­mal lev­els can in­di­cate a se­ri­ous health prob­lem.

Khan fur­ther ex­plained that as part of the analy­sis, an as­sess­ment of the platelet lev­el is done.

“Once the platelet lev­el is high enough the pa­tient is not at any risk for bleed­ing and that is most im­por­tant...we make sure that the platelets are nor­mal or close to nor­mal and if not then they are ad­mit­ted,” Khan said.

He added that St Au­gus­tine Pri­vate Hos­pi­tal al­so has its own lab and as such re­sults are giv­en “right away, in less than one hour.”

A dengue test at St Au­gus­tine Pri­vate Hos­pi­tal car­ries a nom­i­nal fee, “not more that $200 or $250,” he added.

The time­li­ness of the re­sults Khan said is a ma­jor draw to pri­vate labs as op­posed to peo­ple us­ing Gov­ern­ment health­care fa­cil­i­ties.

“Pub­lic health cen­tres do not re­al­ly do blood tests. They may just take the blood and send this off to the ma­jor labs in the hos­pi­tals to do the test­ing,” Khan said, adding that he reg­u­lar­ly li­ais­es with pri­vate doc­tors who have al­so re­port­ed an uptick in pa­tients com­ing in with dengue symp­toms.

“They al­so send peo­ple to the pri­vate labs to do test­ing and usu­al­ly they get re­sults with­in record time, with­in an hour or so and that is im­por­tant. They then take this re­sult back to the gen­er­al pri­vate prac­ti­tion­er and if that gen­er­al pri­vate prac­ti­tion­er sees there is need for ad­mis­sion then the per­son is sent to a pri­vate in­sti­tu­tion,” Khan stat­ed.

He likened the sit­u­a­tion to that of COVID when the pan­dem­ic broke out, which re­sult­ed in an in­flux of peo­ple go­ing to pri­vate labs and pri­vate doc­tors for test­ing and med­ical at­ten­tion.

“I was pass­ing by one of the pri­vate labs the oth­er day and thought how the Gov­ern­ment forced PCR test­ing for COVID on peo­ple and made these pri­vate labs in­to bil­lion­aires,” Khan said.

“So once there is an up­take in any pub­lic health prob­lem, the pri­vate labs ba­si­cal­ly make a lot of mon­ey...A pri­vate lab can on­ly run if there are prof­its. So, if there is COVID, dengue or what­ev­er, there is the pri­vate lab that will cash in be­cause that is the mod­el on which they op­er­ate and the ser­vices they of­fer.”

He rec­om­mend­ed that Gov­ern­ment, in its up­com­ing bud­get, ought to al­low peo­ple to claim for pri­vate test­ing and pri­vate doc­tor vis­its for dengue in their in­come tax re­turns.

“If a pub­lic health in­sti­tu­tion is sup­posed to be one of the places to do these tests and they don’t have the reagents and they take too long, I think the Gov­ern­ment should make it manda­to­ry on the tax re­turns since they can’t sup­ply it,” Khan ad­vised.

A reagent is an in­te­gral part of any chem­i­cal re­ac­tion. A reagent is a sub­stance or com­pound that can fa­cil­i­tate a re­ac­tion, and they are used in most wide­ly used tests. This in­cludes, for ex­am­ple, preg­nan­cy tests, blood glu­cose tests, and most COVID-19 test kits.

Khan al­so high­light­ed that if a per­son with dengue is in dire need of blood, this may not be done on a time­ly ba­sis in the pub­lic hos­pi­tal.

He there­fore, rec­om­mend­ed that pri­vate labs can al­so act as blood banks as­sist in this re­gard.

Pri­vate doc­tors see pa­tient in­flux

Pri­vate labs are not the on­ly ones cash­ing in on the cur­rent dengue sit­u­a­tion.

Pri­vate doc­tors have al­so been see­ing an in­flux of pa­tients.

For­mer Pres­i­dent of the T&T Phar­ma­cy Board (TTPB) and cur­rent coun­cil mem­ber on the board, An­drew Ra­haman, said from the feed­back he has re­ceived some pri­vate health­care fa­cil­i­ties are charg­ing not on­ly for dengue test­ing but al­so a sep­a­rate fee for a con­sul­ta­tion with a doc­tor.

He said he knew of one in­stance where a per­son paid $300 for a test in Ari­ma and al­so had to fork out an ad­di­tion­al $200 for the doc­tor.

“This is $500 but I am sure this can go up to $800,” Ra­haman added.

Checks with some doc­tors in pri­vate prac­tice al­so con­firmed that they have had more peo­ple com­ing with dengue symp­toms.

Re­gard­ing test­ing at pri­vate labs for dengue, Ra­haman said they have been “in­un­dat­ed” with re­quests.

“With the re­port­ing on the deaths, I think the pop­u­la­tion is par­tic­u­lar­ly con­cerned with how rapid peo­ple de­te­ri­o­rate or in some in­stance more peo­ple are seek­ing ad­vise from phar­ma­cists on what to look out for and what to check for dengue,” Ra­haman said.

Al­so, the fact that some peo­ple can eas­i­ly go to some pri­vate labs as op­posed to oth­ers re­flects an “af­ford­abil­i­ty is­sue,” he not­ed.

“Some peo­ple are forced to go to the Gov­ern­ment sec­tor while oth­ers can eas­i­ly pay a pri­vate lab be­cause they can af­ford to do so,” Ra­haman said.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, he said more peo­ple have been pur­chas­ing sup­ple­ments like iron tablets to boost their blood count.

How­ev­er, he warned that if a per­son con­tracts dengue and has low platelet lev­els, then vi­t­a­mins would not help as this would re­quire hos­pi­tal care.

“If the per­son is at that point of dengue haem­or­rhag­ic fever, ur­gent test­ing and care is re­quired,” Ra­haman em­pha­sised.