To prevent, contain and effectively treat infectious diseases, and to train the next generation of competent ID specialists in India, it is vital to have a Department of infectious Diseases with specialist doctors with skill sets to overcome the current challenges and be better prepared for future threats.

India continues to hold top spot in many Infectious diseases prevalence including tuberculosis, childhood diarrhea, and pneumonia to name a few. Moreover, increasing antimicrobial resistance, drug resistance in TB and malaria have put the fight against microbes at crossroads.Kasturba Hospital (KH), Manipal located in coastal Karnataka provides care for a variety of infectious diseases, from Karnataka and neighboring states. Kasturba Hospital provides treatment to a range of acute fever cases including dengue fever, malaria, scrub typhus and leptospirosis especially post-monsoon and challenging cases of fever of unknown origin. With climate change, shrinking forests, urbanization and extensive travel within the country & between the countries there is always a threat of emerging & re-emerging infectious diseases.

Individuals are living longer with access to health care, and technological innovation, advanced surgical techniques and minimal access surgery. Advances in intensive care, new devices & stents and therapeutic procedures bring along with them the risk of infections. Furthermore, the problems are compounded by the crisis imposed by drug-resistant microbes. Department of infectious diseases at Kasturba Hospital will oversee the prevention, and management of infections in the intensive care units.

Manipal Comprehensive Cancer Care Center provides curative and palliative oncology services at Kasturba Hospital. During the treatment of cancers, chemotherapy lays the individual at risk of infections. Organ and stem cell transplantations give a new lease of life to patients with end-stage kidney diseases or blood cancers. However, it comes with a price; the risk of infectious diseases in individuals with compromised immune functions. Kasturba Hospital provides kidney transplantation and stem cell
transplantation services for patients with kidney failure and a variety of leukemia including childhood leukemia. Department of infectious diseases will help in the management of infections in post-transplant patients.