About INDIAN ASSOCIATION OF MEDICAL MICROBIOLOGISTS

Dr Sonal Saxena

Secretary

IAMM Secretary’s report for the year 2022-23

 

Dr Sonal Saxena, Secretary IAMM

“Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success.” – Edward Everett Hale

At the 46^th Annual Conference of IAMM being held at KGMU, Lucknow with the Hon. President Dr Arti Kapil in Chair, I Dr Sonal Saxena, in capacity of Secretary request the permission of chair to begin proceedings with presenting the Secretary’s report for the 2022-23.

Warm greetings to everyone!

Respected President of IAMM Dr Arti Kapil, all esteem members, I, Dr Sonal Saxena, have the privilege and honour of presenting the Secretary’s report and welcome you all to this annual meet here tonight.

1. Memberships: I am glad to add here that as of now we have 3832 life members, 86 student members and 43 annual members as on today. A total of 183 Life memberships were added this year.
2. Welcome to the new EC and Bid adieu to departing EC members: The association extends a warm welcome to six new members that were elected unopposed as executive members of IAMM: Dr Rakesh Singh (JIPMER), Dr Anupama Kindo (SRMC Chennai), Dr Syed Tanwir Alam (GMC, Gauhati), Dr Yogesh K Gupta (RBH, Jaipur) , Dr Sarita Mohapatra, AIIMS, Delhi) and Dr Sunil P Lilani (GMC, Dhule). Treasurer Dr Manoj Kumar and two other EC members Dr Neeraj Goel and Dr S K Shahi have served the association with sincerity, enriching it with their experience. IAMM whole heartedly thanks the outgoing members.
3. The 45^thAnnual Conference: MICROCON-2022
4. The 45th National Conference of Indian Association of Medical Microbiologists, MICROCON 2022 themed “Emerging Microbes and Evolving Microbiologists” commenced with seven pre-conference Workshops and CME at various institutes in and around Bhubaneswar. The event was attended by a total of 1300 delegates and 600 abstracts were submitted for presentations. The Speakers included National and International repute.
5. IAMM Journal: Under the able leadership of Dr Chand Wattal as Editor the IJMM has achieved impact factor of 1.6, after the change of the publisher from Wolters Kluwer to Elsevier. There has been significant decrease in TAT for publication of articles by moving to continuous article publication method (immediate citation of article on acceptance), waiving of author processing fees for better acceptability and affordability. The number of issues in a year have increased from 4 to 6 and a turnaround of IJMM from loss making to profit generating activity and initiation of three Special Issues in the coming months.

Royalty obtained for IJMM for the year 2022 was Euro 10100.76 (equivalent to Rs. 9,09,068/). IJMM is now following the international research ethics guidelines in consonance with other reputed international journals & strictly sticks to the laid down author guidelines for harmonisation of all article types causing an increase in the number of submissions especially from outside India, highlighting its growing popularity and visibility among the national and international researchers.

Also, the access of this journal is now made free to all the registered life members through our official website www.myiamm.in. On the flipside, many members are not able to access IJMM as they have not activated their free IAMM membership through the IAMM official website or are not aware of this fact.

The steps of activation are also outlined in the IAMM newsletter vol. No. 41, Issue No. 3, October, 2023 for the ready reference. We need a strong interactive IAMM website to be able to handle this activity. Members should be able to interact with website vendor to solve their problems. This needs to be publicised frequently in all newsletters of IAMM.

6. IAMM–EQAS: IAMM has two EQAS centres: North and South. ,

1. a) IAMM EQAS New Delhi: in 2023 it has 788 labs attached to it with a total of 86 new participants that were added in 2023. The center received NABL accreditation as a PT provider (PTP) in 2018 & has been re-accreditation in August 2023. The IAMM EQAS New Delhi Team has started Molecular Microbiology EQAS: Tier 2 w.e.f June 2023 and an additional staff, a Scientific Officer has been recruited in this regard. To begin with five parameters included for the molecular EQAS are
2. a) Quantitative assays for HIV, HBV, HCV and CMV and
3. b) qualitative assay for tuberculosis.

As expected, the numbers of participating laboratories are modest (45 laboratories) for the first batch which hopefully would increase over a period of time. NABL accreditation for molecular EQAS will be attempted once a mandatory PT cycle of 1 year is completed.

An additional automated lyophilizer and automated microbroth MIC determining system: Thermo ScientificTM SensititreTM (Germany) have been purchased to improve the analyte quality & also cater to the increase in number of test parameters and analytes.

The IAMM EQAS New DELHI website has been upgraded to include molecular microbiology EQAS including facilities for automatic downloading of Certification of participation by individual laboratories.

1. b) South (Virology): It caters to both virus serology (BBVS, HBV, AHS, dengue serology and Immune response screen) and molecular (HIV-1 RNA, HBV DNA, HCV RNA, CMV DNA, Qualitative CSF meningitis panel, qualitative dengue molecular panel and qualitative respiratory virus panel) panels.

In 2023, a total of 1009 laboratories participated, with 686 labs participating in BBVS, 97 for AHS, 85 for HBV and 404 for dengue and 17 for Immune response screen, while for molecular parameters, 94 for HIV RNA, 140 for HBV DNA, 241 for HCV RNA, 61 for CMV DNA, 131 for qualitative respiratory virus panel, 23 for qualitative dengue virus panel and 18 for qualitative CSF meningitis panel.

7. IAMM Webinars, IAMM PG Assembly:

1. PG assembly: After first conceptualized in 2016 by IAMM Delhi Chapter. In the year 2018, PG assembly was done under the aegis of IAMM, In this year IAMM PG assembly was held at 4 zones of India after due diligence.

• North Zone: AIIMS, New Delhi
• West Zone: AIIMS, Jodhpur
• South Zone: JIPMER, Puducherry
• East Zone: IGIMS, Patna

The PG assembly was well appreciated by the students. We thank all course coordinators namely Dr Lalit Dar, Dr Vijayalaxmi Nag, Dr Rakesh Singh and Dr Namrata kumari as well as Dr Chand Wattal, Dr Sonal Saxena and Dr Neeraj Goal for their successful endeavour. IAMM also thank the official platinum partner, bioMérieux, for their generous support.

2022. Sepsis Webinar: IAMM as an every year under the aegis of IAMM National Body with the support from bioMerieux organized a Webinar on sepsis day with the theme “Sepsis update: What you need to know?” on 13^th September 2022. The webinar received an overwhelming response with 1300+ participants attending the live event not just from India but SAARC countries as well.
2023. IAMM position paper on guidelines for COVID and SARSCoV2 infections: Ravi V, Kapil A, Biswas S, Saxena S. Indian association of medical microbiologists (IAMM) position paper on guidelines for COVID and SARS CoV2 infections. Indian J Med Microbiol. 2023 Mar-Apr; :53-54. doi: 10.1016/j.ijmmb.2023.01.009. Epub 2023 Feb 3. PMID: 36967217; PMCID: PMC9896976.

2023. IAMM PG Masterclass: IAMM has started a PG Masterclass once a month at 6 PM from January 2023. All the classes have a been a tremendous success. To increase the accessibility of these classes, a you tube channel has been created where the content is streamed live and recordings remain available to students. you-tube channel. The you tube channel can be accessed at https://www.youtube.com/iammpgmasterclass. The channel is currently subscribed by 475 subscribers and all videos have collectively generated more than 4000 views. I am thankful to Dr V. Ravi, Dr Arunaloke Chakrabarti, Dr Pallab Ray, Dr A S Valan, Dr Ritu Singhal, Dr Camilla Rodrigues, Dr Poonam Loomba, Dr Ekta Gupta, Dr Rakesh Singh, Dr Rohit Chawla, Dr Rajni Sharma for sparing their valuable time. Overall the lectures have been a huge success and have been attended by microbiologists across the country with great enthusiasm. We request all to subscribe and encourage students to use these learning resources.

IAMM PG MASTERCLASS 2023

Date	Topic	Speaker	Attendees/Youtube views till 31/12/2023
27/1/2023	Acute Encephalitis Syndrome	Dr V Ravi	201/891
17/2/2023	Non Culture based diagnosis of Fungal Infections	Dr Arunaloke Chakrabarti	703/798
21/3/2023	Investigating a healthcare associated AMR outbreak	Dr A S Valan	521/234
24/4/2023	WHO approved Rapid Diagnostics-Game Changer for NTEP	Dr Ritu Singhal	103/86
26/5/2023	Understanding DST in M. tuberculosis Focus on molecular mechanisms	Dr Camilla Rodrigues	91/289
28/7/2023	Strategies for Surveillance of HAI	Dr Poonam Loomba	89/246
25/8/2023	Transplant Associated Infections	Dr Ekta Gupta	86/184
29/9/2023	Laboratory Diagnosis of HIV and strategies to enhance HIV case detection	Dr Rakesh Singh	109/202
20/10/2023	Evaluation of diagnostic assays for infectious diseases	Dr Rohit Chawla	170/216
17/11/2023	WAAW week AMR	Dr Pallab Ray, Dr Rajni Sharma, Dr Sonal Saxena	98/404
29/12/2023	Quality control in AST	Dr V. Balaji	98/280