HC asks ICMR to investigate complaints against private labs

New Delhi: The Delhi High Court on Tuesday ordered the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) to investigate complaints against private pathology laboratories and withdraw their licences if criteria are not met. The ICMR issues licences to laboratories and cannot sit in ivory towers, according to the high court.

“You have to look into it. You give licences to them. The whole year has gone by. The whole nation is suffering,” Justice Najmi Waziri remarked while hearing a contempt plea against authorities for not adhering to the court’s previous direction to take action against online health service aggregators that are operating illegally and collecting samples for Covid-19 tests.

Indian Council of Medical Research said that monitoring of the activities of online health service aggregators does not come under its purview. But it clarified that whenever they receive complaints against private labs, they look into it.

ICMR earlier said in an affidavit that National Accreditation Board for Testing and Calibration Laboratories certification was a must for enrolment of private labs for Covid-19 testing. As on August 16, 2021, it had approved 134 (35 government and 99 private) labs in Delhi for RT-PCR, TrueNat, CBNAAT and other M-NAT testing platforms and the information is available on its website.

ICMR has laid down SOPs and standard guidance for setting up Covid-19 testing labs. Fourteen mentor institutes have been set up in India to guide the labs on implementing these SOPs and set up a testing lab. For Delhi, the mentor institute is AIIMS, it stated.

The Supreme Court had last year directed that Covid-19 tests must be carried out in NABL-accredited labs or any agencies approved by WHO or ICMR. Subsequently, the high court had directed the AAP government to take action against online health service aggregators who were operating illegally without any registration and allegedly collecting samples leading to false negative Covid-19 results.