To impart technical and scientific knowledge and offer rigorous scientific training for capacity-building, the Bangalore APSI team, as part of public health surveillance program, organized the 2nd capacity-building outreach workshop to train municipal corporation personnel from Vijayawada, Andhra Pradesh, Nov 18-19, 2024, aligning with WAAW world AMR awareness week
The workshop, supported by the The Rockefeller Foundation-Alliance for Pathogens Surveillance Innovations-India, was conducted with National Centre for Biological Sciences, Tata Institute for Genetics and Society, India, from Bangalore and Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology and IICT CSIR, Hyderabad. Dr. Rakesh Mishra, Director, Tata Institute for Genetics and Society, India and Dr. LS SHASHIDHARA, Director, National Centre for Biological Sciences gave welcome addresses to the team, who had traveled all the way from Vijayawada to Bangalore with utmost enthusiasm!
The 2-day module comprised of expert talks, interactions and hands-on experiments for end-to-end pathogens surveillance and viral load analysis.
To make the science impactful and applicable, the modules were also offered in local Telugu language.
Addressing the candidates, Dr. Venkata Mohan, Chief Scientist, IICT CSIR gave the inaugural talk 'Wastewater based epidemiology for public health surveillance', presenting the power of WBE for community-level and routine assessment of viral pathogens. This was followed by Dr. Aruna Panda's talk covering the 'ongoing work throughout APSI consortium', the efforts and national-level for integrating the developed protocols and methodologies as part of routine-public health surveillance strategies and Dr. Sufia Sadaf (Ph.D.)'s talk covering 'APSI-Outreach and capacity-building activities in Bangalore' and 'effective modes of community engagement and education'.
As the day proceeded, Dr Shivranjani Moharir's gave the detailed technical talk on 'Wastewatersurveillance for pathogens and AMR', the need to utilise these methods to monitor pathogens and AMR to mitigate and contain rising AMR threat. The protocols were explained by Sreelekshmi R S and Apoorva Shrivatsa from Dr. Moharir's group, TIGS and Athmakuri Tharak from Dr. Mohan's group, CSIR-IICT, through creative analogy and demonstrations.
The teams worked together and successfully performed RNA-extraction for SARS-CoV-2 pathogen viral load from wastewater, qPCR and cT value analysis, guided by volunteers.
Guided tours to @BWSSB STP at Hulimavu, BSL2, NGS facility tours @NCBS, labs and insectary visits @TIGS were also organzied.
Trivia, quiz, pictionary amidst fun-filled atmosphere, followed by felicitation and certificate distributions marked the end of the 2-day program!
We are thankful to the Vijayawada Municipal corporation, Movva Parishudda Babu and VMC team, volunteers, Sreelekshmi R, Apoorva Srivatsa, Vidyasagar Y S , from TIGS, Athmakuri Tharak, CSIR-IICT, Sai Disha K, NCBS and all grounds teams for their immense support!
Outreach Lead: Dr. Sufia Sadaf and Dr. Shivranjani Moharir
Partners: TIGS, NCBS, CCMB and CSIR-IICT, Hyderabad