11th March 2010 happens to be the second anniversary of the formation of IIMAR. The IIMAR- INDIAN INITIATIVE FOR MANAGEMENT OF ANTIBIOTIC RESISTANCE was formed on 11th March 2008 during the IX Sir Dorabaji Tata Symposium on Antimicrobial Resistance held at the JRD Tata Auditorium, IISC, Bangalore. At the small meetings of like minded persons held on the evenings of 10th and 11th March, everybody felt that resistance to antibiotics is assuming significant proportions in India and something needs to be done about it and thus IIMAR came into existence. Amongst the initial coordinators, myself and Dr Mira Shiva continue while Dr Sujith Chandy could not continue due to personal preoccupations.
India is a country of continental proportions and the problem was how to continue the existence of the initiative without any infrastructure and funds. That's where, I thought of creating a `virtual existence`- `the existence on the Internet`- which was free and only required my perseverance, and intellectual labour. For this, the facility of a blog web space, created by Google came very handy. It helped IIMAR to be in touch with all the members and also with everybody concerned about the ABR problem all over the world.
After some preliminary work three interconnected blogs were created, which came into being during the months of May-June 2008. Although I am working single-handedly, I have tried to improve on the blog contents thereafter continuously. From time to time new features have been added, the most recent being the `Indo-Asian antibiotic resistance scenario` and the `Global antibiotic resistance scenario`.
People are generally not pro-active in nature, but I appeal to you all to come forward with any help that you can give in this regard in any form- funds, contribution to blog, running a particular feature –anything you like.
Sincerely yours
A.J. Tamhankar
Join the Indian Initiative for Management of Antibiotic Resistance -IIMAR
