PGI Director To Inaugurate Sexually Transmitted Infections Reference, Research and Training Centre

By 121 News

Chandigarh 13^th August:- Prof Y.K.Chawla, Director PGI will inaugurate Sexually transmitted Infections Reference, Research and Training  Centre  in Deptt of Medical Microbiology on 14^th August. Dr. RS Gupta DDG NACO and Dr. Vanita gupta project director, SACS Chandigarh will preside over the function.  The department has recently been awarded an advanced centre for research and training in sexually transmitted infections (STIs) by NACO.

Dr Sunil Sethi, Professor and Nodal Officer of Regional Centre in the department said that STI are the neglected diseases in our country and under diagnosed. They can increase the transmission of HIV many times. So for the control of HIV, adequate and proper treatment of STIs is very important as all STIs can lead to increase in the transmission of HIV.

The regional centre in PGI will act as nodal agency for providing etiological diagnosis for difficult and treatment failure cases for bacterial, viral, parasitic and fungal STI/ RTI for (a) validation of syndromic diagnosis and (b) STI/ RTI cases not responding to syndromic management, (c) recurrent STI/ RTI (d) treatment failure cases.

It will also train people from state reference laboratories to diagnose cases of sexually transmitted infections and also do the community surveillance in high risk groups like prostitutes, IVD users , and MSM. This population will have maximum STIs and are hidden. This can further lead to increase transmission of STIs and hence HIV.