World Health Organization
Representative to India
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World Health Organization Representative to India |
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Public Health Laboratory Networking
Public health laboratories play a critical role in disease surveillance and response. They are involved in confirmation of etiological diagnosis during outbreaks thereby making the investigation and control more meaningful & scientific. They also help in prevention and control of diseases by keeping a watch on early warning laboratory signals through monitoring the existing as well as emerging & re-emerging pathogens and environmental monitoring.
Laboratory support to disease surveillance in India has been provided by public health laboratories at district, state and national level. These have, however, witnessed a heterogeneous development both in terms of infrastructure and functioning. Furthermore, the evolving disease burden situation in the country has only highlighted the need to work towards strengthening the overall laboratory support in the country. Accordingly, the National Surveillance Programme for Communicable Diseases (NSPCD) and the Integrated Disease Surveillance Project (IDSP), have given priority attention to strengthening of public health laboratories and their networking in India.
Over the years, referral laboratory services in India have made considerable progress in terms of infrastructure, functioning and expertise. This has been especially true of laboratory networks such as those for National Polio Surveillance Project, Revised National Tuberculosis Control Programme, Malaria, HIV/ AIDS etc. Yet, there is a need to clearly define their role and integration into mainstream disease surveillance in the country.
This resource identifies disease- and function-specific areas of expertise of the major referral laboratories (Details of Referral public health laboratories) and defines the framework for their integration and networking (Referral public health laboratories networks) with IDSP. Relevant resources of standard laboratory guidelines on specimen collection, storage, packaging & transport and laboratory methods have been included. Reference IDSP information has also been provided along with links to important related sites for their resources. This resource would be of significant operational assistance to health officials at various levels as well as medical officers directly dealing with communicable diseases.
The weblink would be reviewed periodically and referral laboratories are encouraged to help update this information on a regular basis.
This list of referral laboratories is by no means comprehensive. More referral laboratories are encouraged to submit the details of referral facilities available with them as per the given format. For any other related queries, please contact the under mentioned.
For queries related to this page, contact:
Dr. Manish Kakkar <kakkarm@whoindia.org> Dr. Sampath K Krishnan <krishnans@whoindia.org>
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534, "A" Wing, Nirman Bhawan, Maulana Azad Road, New Delhi - 110 011 E-mail Address: wrindia@searo.who.int Phone: 91-11-23061995, 23062179, 23063632, 23061993; Fax: 23062450 |
