Following a meeting, the CIAA sent a letter to the MoHP asking it to form standards on medical and surgical equipments and their prices within a month.

In the meeting attended by officials from Department of Health Services and Department of Customs, authorities stressed on the need to create uniformity among diagnostic services.

CIAA spokesperson Shreedhar Sapkota confirmed that they directed MoHP to come up with guidelines in next one month.

Dr Bhim Tinkari, director of Logistics Management Division at the DoHS, who was present at the meeting, said the CIAA asked the ministry to figure out authority to regulate medical equipments. “We don’t have a clear policy on who is to regulate the medical equipments,” Dr Tinkari said, adding that though the Department of Drug Administration regulates drugs and medicinal products, the MoHP is yet to allocate the regulatory power to any one of its bodies.

In the lack of a clear policy on medical equipment and laboratory supplies that include chemicals and reagents, various flaws have been seen in the reports of patients’ medical tests on a daily basis. It has also led to situation in which various laboratories show varying results of the same test. Also, prices of

such services vary among laboratories.