State public health lab overworked, understaffed

At the state PHL, which has also been notified as a central food laboratory and a referral institute for water-quality monitoring, 30 of the 58 Class-II posts are vacant. Of the 14 Class-I posts at the lab, only two are occupied. This, when the lab also gets samples from private entities as well as various government departments.

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The situation is no better at the regional public health laboratories (PHLs) in Aurangabad and Nagpur and PHLs in districts.

While each regional laboratory has 31 sanctioned posts, there are multiple vacancies in the categories of chief technical officer, senior scientific officer, technical officer, research officer, senior chemical assistants and others.

“Apart from departmental promotions, officials have to clear a tough ‘food analysts’ for Class-I and II posts. However, there have not been many takers. We have also tried to fill up Class-III posts and submitted proposals to the state government for recruiting more staff,” said S B Kamble, deputy director, State Public Health Laboratory.

Kamble was, however, quick to add that the work did not suffer despite manpower shortage. “Maharashtra’s lab is among the top 10 in the country,” he said, while citing an instance of a team of Kerala MLAs visiting Pune’s lab in January this year to check how the work was done there.

Despite the acute shortage of staff, the work flow has been increasing at the lab. For instance, the number of samples sent there from January till May this year from government departments alone was 9,000, in addition to 1,600 samples from individuals and private firms. Since the public health lab has also been designated as a central referral lab, at least 25 samples are sent from various states like Tripura, Agartala, Mizoram, Manipur, Sikkim and others for verification of their food lab reports.

Water contamination a threat in the state

In April-May this year, as many as 1,31,635 drinking water samples from across the state were tested at the state PHL in Pune, of which 12,624 were found to be contaminated. Among the districts which showed more than 20 per cent of water contamination included Jalna, Beed, Nanded, Akola, Buldhana and Hingoli.

During a chemical analysis of water disinfectants undertaken at the lab to ascertain its potability as per the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) specifications, as many as 1,64, 936 samples including alum, bleaching powder and others were tested at the lab, of which 56,775 were found to be non-potable.

From January till May this year, as many as 13,335 food samples were tested. These included edible oil, milk, spices, condiments, milk products and beverages. Of these, 1,191 did not conform to the standards laid down by the Food and Safety Standards Authority of India (FSSAI).

“These tests are stringent and various categories of foods have to clear specified parameters. For instance, there are 40 parameters to be checked before packaged drinking water can be approved while there are nine parameters for edible oil and so on,” Shashikant Kekare, Joint Commissioner (Food) at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Pune division, said.