At a Glance
Package: Basic Fever Package. Tests: 45 parameters, 5 components. Price: From 699. Fasting: Not required. Sample: Blood and urine, single visit. Reports: 12 hours, digital. Home collection: Free across Delhi. Lab: NABL-accredited. In a house where three generations share a kitchen, one person's fever is never a private matter. From August through November, when dengue, malaria and chikungunya all circulate across Delhi NCR, the useful question is which illness — not whether to wait another day. This is the entry-tier workup: it tests malaria and typhoid directly, screens the urine for infection, and reads the blood count and a pathologist-prepared blood smear for the patterns those illnesses leave behind. One limitation decides whether this is the right tier for you: there is no dengue test in this package. If the fever began within the past week and dengue is plausible, the Advance Fever Package adds Dengue NS1 Antigen (Rapid), Typhidot by ELISA, and full Kidney Function and Liver Function profiles to this same base. ## Typhoid Testing: What Widal Can and Cannot Show Widal (Slide Agglutination Test) detects antibodies against Salmonella typhi and Salmonella paratyphi. It is the long-standing, widely available typhoid screen in India, and its limits are well documented enough to state plainly. Widal cross-reacts with other Salmonella species, and antibodies linger after a past infection or a typhoid vaccination — so a single positive result in an endemic area does not establish current infection. Titres also need roughly a week of illness to rise, which means a sample drawn on day 2 or day 3 can read negative in someone who genuinely has typhoid. Classically, a confident call needs paired samples 7 to 10 days apart showing a rising titre. Typhidot, which detects IgM and IgG antibodies specific to Salmonella typhi and turns positive earlier in the illness, is not in this package. It sits in the Advance Fever Package and the Comprehensive Fever Package. One caveat applies to all three tiers: blood culture remains the reference standard for typhoid, and none of these packages includes it. If your doctor needs certainty — particularly before starting or changing an antibiotic — blood culture is the test to ask for, drawn before the first dose. ## Blood Picture - Peripheral Smear Examination A machine can count cells. It cannot look at them. This component is a slide prepared from your sample and read under a microscope by a qualified pathologist, cell by cell — pathologist time rather than analyser time, which is exactly why it is the first line item dropped when a package is being priced down. The profile reports five findings: Red Blood Cells, White Blood Cells, Platelets, Hemoparasites, and a written Impression from the pathologist. Two of those earn their place in a fever workup. Hemoparasites means the pathologist is searching for malarial parasites inside your red cells — direct visual evidence in a region where malaria has not gone away. Platelets matter because a falling platelet count is the single most important thing to track in dengue, and automated counters can read clumped platelets as a dangerously low number. A pathologist reviewing the slide catches that artefact before anyone acts on it. The smear also answers a question a count can only raise. A CBC reports that haemoglobin is low; the smear says why. Microcytic red cells point toward iron deficiency, macrocytic cells toward B12 or folate deficiency, sickle-shaped cells toward sickle cell disease, and blast cells raise the possibility of leukaemia. With over 50% of Indian women aged 15–49 anaemic (NFHS-5, 2019–21), an incidental low haemoglobin on a fever panel is common enough to be worth explaining rather than just flagging. ## The Other 3 Components CBC with ESR (21): Haemoglobin, RBC and platelet counts, haematocrit, the full white cell differential and the Erythrocyte Sedimentation Rate. In fever this is the pattern-reading component — a low platelet count with a raised haematocrit suggests dengue, a neutrophil-predominant rise suggests bacterial infection, lymphocytosis suggests a viral one. MALARIA ANTIGEN -EIA (1): An enzyme immunoassay for malarial antigen, read alongside the smear; antigen can stay detectable for some days after treatment has cleared the parasites, so timing shapes interpretation. Complete Urine Analysis (17): Colour, appearance, protein, glucose, nitrites, leukocytes, pus cells, red cells, casts and crystals — the screen that identifies urinary tract infection as the fever source, a cause blood tests miss entirely. Note that a routine urine analysis detects overt proteinuria but not microalbuminuria, so it is not a test for early diabetic kidney disease. ## Limitations This package tests for no dengue marker, and no chikungunya, scrub typhus, leptospira, COVID-19 or influenza. It includes no blood culture, no C-Reactive Protein, no Procalcitonin and no imaging. A normal result does not name a cause; it shortens the list. Fever with breathlessness, persistent vomiting, bleeding, drowsiness or falling urine output needs in-person medical assessment, not a repeat blood test. ## Sources NFHS-5, 2019–21 Content last reviewed: October 2026
