DEPARTMENT OF MICROBIOLOGY

The history of the department started in 2019 with few faculty members in a single room of MMABM Hospital. After the first batch of MBBS students in 2019, the department had an inspiration to go beyond the four walls, as the main campus Dialgam was though still in infancy. Soon the world was struck with the pandemic by ending 2020 this gave unexpected and extra boost to our department as Government Medical College Anantnag holds a prior position in the region. It caters to the regions of Pirpanjal down to city. In this event under ICMR mentorship a full-fledged virology setup on war footing was put in place for RT PCR testing with world class infrastructure, equipment and BSL II facilities. Extra staff was recruited and trained for molecular work at state level virology facility at SKIMS, Soura Srinagar. The Government Medical College Anantnag virology laboratory stands at 353 covid testing in ICMR list. Till date 4,41,985 samples have been received for RT PCR testing. Among them 15,654 were declared positive. Positive samples were sent for sequencing at National level virology centres in Delhi and Pune. Our lab has done very well at external quality control testing. Government Medical College Anantnag catered to Pulwama, Shopian, Kulgam and Anantnag districts. Not only RT PCR, Rapid antigen testing was done for 44,063 number of samples. Not only did we stop here, but continued to help the patients of Black eye. An emergency Mycology setup was made with facilities for diagnosis of mucormycosis and Government Medical College Anantnag was designated as centre for mucormycosis for entire south of Union Terrorist of J&K. Fortunate enough, we were able to diagnose and report the cases of ENT and medicine departments which helped our clinicians/surgeons to save the lives. As on today, we have a full-fledged department on 3rd floor, overviewing lush green orchards od Dialgam. It has almost 7 Laboratories for different sections, one big museum, 2 demonstration rooms and an animal house as per NMC guidelines. We are ready for an emergency 24x7 service laboratory at MMABM Hospital Anantnag. The department is to coordinate with CSIR-IIIM, Sanat Nagar Srinagar campus for the BSL3 facility for drug susceptibility testing of level-3 pathogens (like tuberculosis/ other drug resistant bacteria/viruses etc). The hospital infection control program of GMC Anantnag is organized and run by the department along with the members of Hospital infection control committee. The department focuses to provide quality services and improve continuously with respect to patient care.