The infectious disease burden in India, is amongst the highest in the world. This problem is further compounded by the rapid rise in antimicrobial resistance, due to the easy availability and unregulated as well as indiscriminate use of antibiotics, often making simple infections very difficult to treat. In the present setting, where on one hand, infections caused by multi-drug resistant oraganisms are on the rise, and on the other hand, evidence-based medical practice has become the current norm, gone are the days when physicians could take the risk of managing infections with empiric (or sometimes even trial-and-error based) antimicrobial therapy. All this makes the role of Clinical Microbiology (for the diagnosis and effective evidence- based management of infectious diseases), of paramount importance. Unfortunately, this ever-increasing importance of is not reflected in the current scenario of diagnostic laboratories in Jabalpur, where Clinical Microbiology is still relegated to being a small subset of a Pathology Laboratory, and deals only with basic bacterial cultures, which are mostly performed by personel not specially trained in diagnostic clinical microbiology.
We, at BIOCELL labs, aspire to change this scenario as well as the mindset or perspective of the physicians of this city towards the diagnosis and management of infections...