New AH1N1 lab

[NewsWhore]

The Ministry of Public Health says that it will be ready to begin testing for suspected flu cases next Wednesday. New equipment to carry out the tests, which arrived in the country yesterday, is being installed at the Dominican-Japanese Friendship Medical Center at the Luis Eduardo Aybar Public Hospital. Up until now, samples for testing had to be sent to the Center for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia. Doctors are training local staff on the use of the equipment, which was donated by the CDC and will permit Real-Time Polymerase Chain Reaction Testing for the detection of the AH1N1 flu. The Pan-American Health Organization (PAHO) has donated 10,000 testing kits. This week the first two cases of AH1N1 were detected in the DR, but these were mild and did not require medication. The only Latin American country to not report cases of the virus so far is Nicaragua, according to the Pan American Health Organization.

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