Healthcare Workers are always at high risk of infection since they deal with the infectious patients and materials in the hospital. The knowledge about the acquired infections and diseases as an occupational hazard, preventive methods and the improvisation of such knowledge by following standard precautions is not known and not followed by significant number of laboratory technicians. Objectives: To determine the awareness and practices of standard precautions among the laboratory technicians of a tertiary care hospital at New Delhi. Methodology: The present study is a hospital-based cross-sectional study. A semi-structured, selfadministered bilingual questionnaire, based on WHO standard precautions and ICMR good lab practices, was used to assess the knowledge, attitude and practices of standard precautions among laboratory technicians of biochemistry, pathology, microbiology, DOTS and hematology laboratories of a tertiary care hospital. Ethical certificate for the study was been obtained from the Institute Ethics Committee of VMMC and Safdarjung Hospital. Result: 84 forms were administered to study samples. 81 forms (96.4%) were filled and returned. 17.28% (14) of the participants had experienced needle pricks at some time in the past. 90% of the study participants were aware about the standard precautions. Majority (98.76%) of them did not know about the biosafety level of their laboratories and all of them reported absence of accident register. Majority (69.1%) of them were somewhat knowledgeable (>75% of the total score). There was no significant difference in the knowledge level of the participants based on their sex (p-0.296), age groups (p-0.083) or the departments (p-0.324). Conclusion: The study concluded that there was lack of knowledge among technicians for their safety and health which demands CME program, refresher trainings, re-orientation classes and hands-on-training for reinforcements on standard precautions, regularly.

Assam, alone, with 2.6% of the country’s population, contributes > 5% of the total malaria cases in the country. Keeping in view the importance of malaria in the North East and its special significance to the Armed Forces the present study was undertaken to review the malaria situation in Assam. Data on commonly used parameters of malaria surveillance including drug resistance from 2000 to 2008 were collected. Subsequently the extensive data was compiled in the form of Malaria Atlas Of Assam with choroplath maps at district and PHC level. The number of hospital admissions due to malaria in various service hospitals post 2009 have been taken as an index to measure the success of focused interventions. District wise mean API of Assam is depicted in Table 1 whereas District wise pattern of reported chloroquine resistance is presented in Figure 1 [4] Total number of admissions due to malaria (both P Vivax and P falciparum species) in service hospitals in the state of Assam for the period 2000 to 2008 is depicted in Table 2. Month wise distribution of cases of malaria in a particular Army field formation (where the revised focused intervention strategy was first implemented) for the year 2009 along with type of infection is given in Table 3. The service personnel deployed in NE region are especially vulnerable as they share the same anthropoecosystem as that of local population but at the same time lack the partial immunity to malaria enjoyed by local population[1]. The data collated by us has shown that the patterns of malaria incidence are not uniform across the state and varies considerably even within the same District. Having API based choroplath maps upto PHC level is of great value for malaria risk assessment for the security forces.