As part of their Advanced methodologies course in semester 7 of the Bachelor’s program, Sharjah Women’s College senior medical lab students, with their faculty Dr Nishi Singh and senior technologist Rula Al Muhtadi, spent a morning at the at Al Qassimi Hospital’s Virology Reference laboratory, one of its kind in the UAE.
The lab has been set up by the Ministry of Health under the able guidance of Microbiologist In-charge Dr Mansour Al Zarouni, in collaboration with the WHO’s MENA regional lab in Cairo.
The students had a fruitful day learning the techniques in viral tissue culture, isolating the ever-dreaded influenza virus in Monkey diploid kidney cell line. The process involved requires utmost precision and strict aseptic techniques in handling tissue cultures and patient specimens.
It is a matter of pride for the Sharjah Womens’ College Med Lab program that one of our graduates is taking care of this process. Also, another graduate is employed in the Molecular Virology section of this lab where the virus is detected in the patient specimens using the viral genome detection technique of Real time PCR.
For the students it was a delight to be able to see all the theoretical details being practiced for patient diagnostics in a Northern Emirates hospital.
The med lab team also took this opportunity to thank Dr Mansour for his continued support in teaching and training the med lab students in clinical microbiology, collaborating in graduate research projects and giving valuable feedback as member of the program advisory committee.
