New Delhi : Come January, kits will be available at the initiative of the health ministry for screening diabetes at an affordable cost of Rs 3 to 5, as against the currently available market alternatives, costing Rs 15 to 30 for a strip.
Diabetes is widely prevalent in India, but it goes
untreated, since it is not
diagnosed in time, and hence the Delhi-based
Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) engaged five institutions to develop affordable kits for the
sugar test.
Two of the kits developed do not even require pricking to take a tiny blood sample for the test. IIT, Kharagpur, has developed a kit that will diagnose instantly the level of the blood sugar just from the saliva in the mouth, while another kit developed by the Aman Institute of Tamil Nadu promises to detect sugar levels using the pulse of the hand.
ICMR chief Dr V M Katoch said three other kits developed by the IIT, Mumbai, NDRF, Bangalore, and BITS, Hyderabad, require pricking to get the blood sample, at a cost not exceeding Rs 5 per test. He said all five low-cost diabetes screening technologies are in the final stages of testing and he is confident that they will be commercialised and launched before the year-end.
He said the affordable kits will give relief to the people, solving the problem of some five crore not diagnosed in the country because of the costly tests and poor awareness about a host of health problems a person faces because of the uncontrolled disease. Once a person knows his diabetes status, he can get medical help and that is the sole purpose of the research projects awarded by the ICMR, Dr Katoch added.
