Secretary's Report

Secretary's Report

Dr. Sonal Saxena

Secretary IAMM

IAMM Secretary’s report for the year 2024-25

Dr. Sonal Saxena, Secretary IAMM

Namaskar!!!!

At the 48th Annual Conference of IAMM being held at New Delhi with the Hon. President Dr Mahantesh B. Nagamoti in Chair, I, Dr Sonal Saxena, in capacity of Secretary request the permission of chair to begin proceedings with reading of the Secretary report for the 2024-25. 

Respected President of IAMM Dr Nagamoti, all esteem members, I, Dr Sonal Saxena, have the privilege and honour of presenting the Secretary’s report.

“As we look back on the year gone by, we celebrate not just our accomplishments, but the collective spirit that made them possible.”

  1. I am pleased to share that the Association now has a total of 4,019 life members, with 105 new life memberships and 179 associate memberships added during the year.
  2. The association extends a warm welcome to one new member of executive council: Dr Renu Gupta from Institute of Human Behaviour and allied Sciences, New Delhi.
  3. 2nd IAMM MiDCon for 2025 was conducted at Department of Microbiology J N medical College, KAHER Belagavi on 28-29th March 2025 that was attended by many luminaries and 140 delegates.
  4. The 47th Annual Congress of the Indian Association of Medical Microbiologists, MICROCON-2024, organized by the Department of Microbiology, BJMC, Pune, was held from 22nd to 24th November 2024 with 18 Pre-conference Workshops and CME sessions. With a turnout of almost 1100 delegates the event witnessed a vibrant exchange of ideas, with over 255 oral papers, and 324 e-poster presented by delegates.
  5. IAMM proudly launched its first-ever Certificate Course on Infection Prevention and Control, a landmark initiative led by Dr. Bharti Malhotra, President IAMM, and Dr. Sonal Saxena, Secretary IAMM. The second cohort concluded on 29th April with an assessment and contact session, marking the completion of 24 online sessions totaling 52 hours of expert learning. Heartfelt thanks to the EC members and esteemed faculty — Dr. Purva Mathur, Dr. Manisha Biswal, Dr. A. S. Valan, Dr. Renu Gupta, and Dr. Sanjib Gogoi — for their exceptional dedication and commitment to excellence.
  6. IAMM successfully conducted its first-ever six-week online course from August to September, enrolling 60 enthusiastic participants. The program featured 15 interactive sessions spanning 28 training hours, concluding with an online exit examination. Heartfelt appreciation to the dedicated faculty team — Dr. Pallab Ray, Dr. Nandini Sethuraman, Dr. Nilma Hirani, and Dr. Renu Gupta — for making this pioneering initiative a resounding success.
  7. IAMM short Courses: Four hand-on workshops were organized; a three day workshop on WHONet and one day workshop on GCLP were held in Delhi. The three day 1st ever technician training workshop under the aegis of IAMM was organized at AIIMS from 11-13th Sept, 2025 with the objective of strengthening the practical skills of laboratory technical staff that was attended by a total of 24 participants from various microbiology laboratories across the country. IAMM thanks the coordinators namely Dr Poonam Loomba for WHONET, my dept at MAMC for GCLP and Dr Sarita Mohapatra for their efforts.
  8. IAMM organised a hands-on workshop in collaboration with Illumina on next generation sequencing. ‘Advancing Clinical Microbiology with Next Gen Sequencing’ at their Solutions Center in Bengaluru from 2-4 Sept. The workshop received an overwhelming response with over 30+ registrations and participation from selected group of 10 senior clinical microbiologists.
  9. In this year PG Assembly was organized at four centres namely AFMC, Pune, AIIMS, Patna, St. Johns Medical College, Bengaluru and AIIMS, Rishikesh. It was attended by 87 students from across the country. The training focussed on newer technologies such as automated systems, MALDI-TOF, gene sequencing etc. We thank all course coordinators for their successful endeavour. IAMM also thank the coordinating team of Dr Chand Wattal, Dr Sonal Saxena and Dr Neeraj Goel and the official partner, bioMérieux, for their generous support.
  10. IAMM as every year under the aegis of IAMM National Body with the support from bioMerieux organized a Webinar on sepsis day with the theme “Sepsis 360゜: Recognise, Response and Rescue” on 13th September 2025 that got an overwhelming response with 1000+ participants attending the live event.
  11. IAMM has started a PG Masterclass once a month at 6 PM from January 2023. All the classes have a been a tremendous success. To increase the accessibility of these classes, a you tube channel has been created where the content is streamed live and recordings remain available to students. you-tube channel. I am happy to report that the channel is currently subscribed by 1.66k subscribers and all videos have collectively generated more than 35,000 views. I am thankful to Dr Nivedita, Dr Priya Abraham, Dr Bharti Malhotra, Dr Urvashi Singh, Dr Ekta Gupta, Dr Sumathi Murlidhar, Dr Sumeeta Khurana, Dr Malini Capoor, Dr Sumit Rai, Dr Sanjib Gogoi and Dr Oves Siddiqui for sparing their valuable time.
  12. IJMM has achieved impact factor of 1.45 and cite score of 2. The number of issues in a year have increased from 4 to 6 and a special issue was published for the first time this year. Royalty obtained for IJMM for the year 2024 was INR 25,93,043.54.
  13. IAMM has two EQAS centres: North and South.

IAMM EQAS New Delhi :

We feel privileged to put on record the start of the twelfth year of the IAMM-EQAS New Delhi, which started functioning from 2014, and is NABL accredited PT provider since 2018 under the able guidance of Dr. Chand Wattal. As of today it is the EQAS center for North, Central & North east India. Tier 1 Microbiology EQAS started with 320 centers in 2014 and has now risen to 866 participants. Tier 2 molecular EQAS with five molecular parameters began in 2023 with 48 participating laboratories and presently stands at 116 till date.

IAMM South:

Participation has grown impressively, with enrollments increasing from 1,130 to 1,225 participants, performance remained robust, achieving 100% response rates and scores exceeding 90% across all Tier II Advanced Bacteriology panels. The AMR Panel saw 62% of participants scoring above 75%, reflecting strong engagement in antimicrobial resistance testing with an exceptional 99.6% overall satisfaction with the MICROEQAS program. Digitally, the website has been upgraded to facilitate seamless registration and payments, with result entry and evaluation modules currently in development. Infrastructure enhancements include the installation of a new lyophilizer, boosting production capacity from 1,000 to 1,500 vials per batch and enhancing overall efficiency. It also caters to neibouring countries in addition to south, west and central zone

IAMM chapters contributed to academic learnings and developments in various states. The details of activities were incorporated in our newsletters.

As I end my tenure, I wish to put on record my heartfelt gratitude presidents I had opportunity to work with, Dr Camilla, Dr Bharti Malhotra, Dr Arti Kapil and Dr Nagamoti. A very special thanks to all past presidents especially Dr B L Sherwal, Dr Arunaloke, Dr Pallab Ray, Dr Abhay Chaudhary, Dr V Ravi. Heartfelt thanks to all EC members for your unwavering support, teamwork, and trust. Your energy and commitment have been the driving force behind every success of IAMM during my tenure as Secretary.

"Each milestone achieved by IAMM this year reflects our collective dedication — transforming challenges into opportunities, and vision into visible progress for the this community."

Thank you. 

Dr Sonal Saxena