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2. Out of hours and public holidays
We offer foremost a reference facility and therefore do not provide an oncall
service. The majority of specimens we receive will have had
preliminary diagnosis made by the sender or primary laboratory and so are
usually non-urgent. The laboratory is usually closed on public holidays;
when there is an extended holiday period, for example Christmas and New
Year, limited cover is arranged to deal with non– urgent postal specimens,
and all users are informed of these arrangements prior to the holidays.
Where urgent diagnosis of malaria out of normal hours is required,
specimens should be referred to:-
The Department of Clinical Parasitology at the Hospital for Tropical
Diseases (HTD), telephone number: 0845 155 5000 and ask for the duty
Tropical Medicine Doctor on bleep 5845, who will liaise with the on-call
Biomedical Scientist.
Depending on the origin of the specimen, a charge may be incurred for this
service.
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