Prediction of the global distribution of emerging infectious diseases (EID) indicates a relatively high risk of EIDs in India and particularly, in the north of India. Indeed, India has witnessed some large outbreaks of emerging infections, mostly of bacterial and zoonotic viral origin in the last three decade. The national outbreak data shows that while the year-wise outbreaks of cholera, malaria and viral hepatitis have diminished, outbreaks of acute diarrhoea, dengue, and measles are on the rise. Diseases like dengue, chikungunya, zika have a period of quiescence following reappearance with a virulence of higher magnitude. Further, the lack of adherence to stringent sterilization practices in hospitals and clinics and the rise of drug-resistant bacterial strains has resulted in soaring nosocomial infections. Unless contained the highly communicable nature of these diseases can lead to their spread in the country and worldwide as evident from the ongoing COVID-19 crisis.
According to disease burden profile reports, infectious diseases like malaria, diarrhoea, HIV-1, dengue, chikungunya and respiratory infections that include pneumonia and pulmonary tuberculosis (TB) are persistent in the country and largely contribute to YLL (year of life loss) of the citizen. Furthermore, Kanpur and the central UP have a relatively large burden of TB including multidrug- resistant/Rifampicin-resistant TB, pneumonia, bronchitis and HIV-1-related diseases. This highlights the need for simple but robust diagnosis, appropriate therapeutics and interventions to lower the medical trauma and life loss by tropical and infectious diseases in the state and throughout the country.
Based on our academic excellence and technological strengths of the CoE of infectious diseases, we target technological advancement and development of diagnostics, therapeutics and preventive methods. The specific objectives are: (i) Establishing methods and preventive tools to restrain the spread of infectious diseases; (ii) Establishing early and accurate diagnosis and prognosis of infectious diseases, and (iii) Fundamental and applied research for developing appropriate therapeutics for the cure of infectious diseases.