Head of the Department:     Dr. S.T. Pasha, Joint Director

The division is actively involved in disease diagnosis during epidemics and outbreak, operational research, manpower development, advisory role and other multifarious activities towards prevention and control of a cascade of epidemic prone disease of larger public health importance.  The division is collaborating with different divisions of NICD and with outside organizations/Institutes.  The division has two laboratory wings:

Molecular Diagnostics & Genomics Wing  

Biochemistry Wing

• Biochemistry unit has emphasis on heavy metal toxicity, chemical analysis of water including fluoride toxicity, pesticide analysis.  Iodine deficiency disorders (IDD), epidemic dropsy and a wide range of clinical chemistry / hematology estimations.
• The division also participates in teaching, training, conference, workshops, seminar, symposia and other academic activities.
• The division is conducting research leading to Ph.D degree.
• The division is providing summer training/project training to M.Sc/B.Tech students.

Outbreak Investigations* (May to August, 2007)

Fluorosis:  Surveillance on the request of DGHS was conducted in Sonbhadara district of UP for dental fluorosis/skeletal fluorosis and water analysis in drinking water for fluoride content.

Suspected Bird Flu :  Throat swab samples, suspected for avian influenza H5N1 (Bird Flu) were processed for molecular diagnosis using one step RT-PCR kit as per WHO guidelines.  All the samples were found to be negative.

Chikungunya virus:  Suspected serum samples for Chikungunya virus are being analysed for molecular typing.

B. Anthracis:  Suspected animal samples from Orissa and human isolates from Kerala for B. anthracis were subjected to PCR for molecular diagnosis.  All were found negative.

Meeting/Conference:  Faculty members of this division attended scientific conferences.

Ph.D:  Two Ph.D scholars have been awarded Ph.D degrees from J.M.I., New Delhi & Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar. 

Workshop:  A 4 days workshop for Laboratory Technicians working in IDD Cell of different states was conducted from 6 – 9 August 2007 under NIDDCP.  Participants from 12 States including North-East attended the workshop.

Scientific Papers published: (January – August, 2007)

·         Diagnostic Potential of IS 110, 38 KDa & 85 B Sequence based polymerase chain reaction in the diagnosis of Mycobacterium tuberculosis in chemical samples. Ind.J.Med. Microbiology 25(1), 43-49, 2007.

·         Structural CpreM gene sequence based molecular epidemiology of circulating Dengue-3 virus in the capital city of Delhi is communicated to Archives of Virology, 2007.

·         Poster titled “Molecular subtype of dengue viruses that dominated northern India causing major outbreak during post-monsoon months of 2006” was selected for travel award at 23^rd Annual Clinical Virology Symposium held at Clearwater Beach, Florida from April 29 – May 2, 2007.

·         Paper entitled “Impact of HIV Co-injection on the genomic variability of HCV in Indian patients with concurrent HCV-HIV co-injection” has been accepted for presentation at 14^th International Symposium on HCV and related viruses to be held at Glasgow (Scotland) from 9-13 Sept., 2007