Referral Services

(a) Referral Centre for Mycobacterial Diseases

The Institute has been identified as a Referral Centre for Mycobacterial Diseases for the purposes of testing of immunodiagnostics and biotechnological products. The Institute is serving as a co-ordinating centre for testing of PCR based techniques and serological tests for tuberculosis, leprosy and other mycobacterial diseases.

(b) Mycobacterial Repository Centre

This Centre established in 1995 with financial support from DBT is now a permanent centre being funded by ICMR. The Centre has networked 38 medical institutions across the country and has been fulfilling the following main objectives :

• Collection of mycobacteria (more than 4000 well characterized isolates of M.tuberculosis and other mycobacteria have been collected from different parts of the country)
• Supply of reference and well characterized strains (since inception the centre has served more than 100 scientists working on different projects)
• Characterization of mycobacterial isolates (the centre is providing referral services to different scientists)
• Epidemiological characterization of mycobacterial strains (multicentric studies on transmission of tuberculosis are being undertaken)
• Training of manpower (large number of scientists and other workers have been trained)

(c) AIDS Surveillance Centre

• This Centre carries out sero-surveillance of HIV in different population groups (blood donors, STD patients, TB patients, foreign students, persons voluntarily coming for testing) and leprosy patients. The Institute also serves as a State Referral Centre for HIV testing and has been named as a Voluntary Blood Testing Centre.
• Counselling services are provided to HIV positive individuals as a part of VCTC.