Greetings from the president’s desk.
Wishing all the IAMM members and their families a very happy new year 2024! I am highly thankful to my seniors, the past presidents, the executive council members and the GBM for showing faith in me and bestowing on me the responsibility of the president of this very prestigious association.
I promise to work hard to take up the challenges facing us, to strengthen the medical microbiologists, the local chapters and go forward together, linking with national and international associations. We are all already playing key roles in various programs of the ICMR, NCDC, WHO, ASM, NTEP, NVBDCP and various other bodies. We have all successfully demonstrated the role played by microbiologists in the recent pandemic of COVID, but now we need to look at the infectious diseases holistically following the ONE HEALTH and the syndromic approach, we are lucky to have the technology on our side with plethora of rapid point of care tests, the multiplex PCR, the NGS, MALDITOFF and various automated systems. We should reassess our strengths and weaknesses and be ready to face the new emerging infections and be pandemic ready. We need to work as clinical microbiologists and not forget the neglected tropical diseases too. AMR and infection prevention control are the burning issues which need constant interactions with all cadres of health care workers and can be only controlled by multidisciplinary approach. We require integration with various clinical associations of surgeons, physicians, pediatricians, gynecologists etc., not forgetting the nurses and the paramedical force and interacting with them more frequently.
I wish to thank and congratulate the IAMM EQAS run by Dr Chand Wattal, Dr V Balaji, Dr Rajesh, and their teams for providing excellent services and constantly enhancing their menu as per the need of the hour. Thanks to them we are assured of our lab results. The IJMM Editor Dr Chand Wattal and his team have done commendable work in bringing the journal to newer heights and significant increase in impact factor too!
I would like to congratulate the organizers of the 46th national conference Dr Amita Jain, Dr Vimla, and their team for organizing an excellent conference which was a true feast not only in terms of the academics but also the food and entertainment too, all done in the grand Nawabi style!
I wish good luck to the organizers of the 47th national conference Dr Rajesh Karyakarte and his team, looking forwards to meeting all soon in Pune. I have no words to thank our all our present and past EC members, past presidents, past secretaries, for their untiring efforts to strengthen IAMM and bring to present form. I specially want to thank Dr Arti Kapil the outgoing president and Dr Sonal profusely for their untiring efforts to take IAMM forwards. IAMM has initiated many new programs specially for the students like PG assembly, Master class etc which would help build our future generation. I would really appreciate it if the members could send their suggestions to further improve the IAMM.
Best wishes
Bharti Malhotra
