Thanks to the work of the doctors in all specialties there was a steep decline in the incidence of many infectious diseases. Typhus, smallpox and a number of other infectious diseases are gone. Nowadays many people develop an impression that an infectious pathology went to the background and infectious diseases are a hangover from the old days. But in fact it is not like that. Annually in many countries and on all continents is recorded pest, cholera, hemorrhagic fever. Bloodborne infections such as HIV infection and parenterally transmitted viral hepatitis are steadily attacking humanity. Doctors know about 1200 different infections, in one way or another dangerous as not all of them are fully understood and there are not means of saving from all of them. There are such infectious diseases the causes of which are not quite clear and treatment is complicated by the fact that cure to them haven’t been created yet.

We have seen more than 30 new infectious diseases in recent years. Among them is HIV infection and a range of other diseases, which may be less known, but nevertheless are important: legionellosis, epidemical rotavirus gastroenteritis and the whole range of African hemorrhagic fevers, including Ebola fever. New diseases are constantly emerging. Infectious diseases hold a significant position among causes of death in the whole world. They claim about 12 million lives annually, every hour about 1500 people in the world die of them, more than half are children under 5years. According to WHO, infectious diseases accounting for about one quarter of deaths in the world. Contagious disease mortality among children exceeds 60% of all deaths in childhood.

Of great importance nowadays is developing new methods for laboratory diagnostics of infectious diseases. Laboratory studies play an important role in diagnosis of infectious diseases, gene therapy prescribing, monitoring the effectiveness of treatment. Specific laboratory diagnosis process is based on pathogen detection and response in the human body throughout the infection process. In modern conditions diagnosis of infectious diseases conserves all its traditional features, formed over the past decades. Meanwhile the diagnosis is characterized by continuous improvement of already found approaches and methods of diseases detecting and search for new, more effective tools, including express methods. A need to further develop of infectious diseases diagnostic methods is based in large part on the fact that become more exact pathogenesis of infectious diseases and change in disease patterns.

Defining in doctor’s action is the medical treatment provision to the patient, and usage of modern diagnosticums allows avoiding mistakes in the empirical prescriptions of medicines and         therapy duration. Treatment of patients with infectious pathology should be complex, etiologically and pathogenetically reasoned and personalized taking into account body state of a patient, severity and phase of the disease. During complex therapy we are forced to take into consideration all interrelated factors, taking part in infectious disease development. Complex etiological and pathogenetical therapy requires the provision of rational and studied approach to the selection and prescription of adequate doses of medicines that only help ill organism and its host defenses (physiological devices, sensu S.P.Botkin) in eradication of infection process. In order to avoid complications using different   therapeutic techniques, is necessary to consider «intervention in nature limit» (A.F.Bilibin). It is not a full range of questions, which are discussed on the present web pages.         Extensive discussion of modern infectology problems among specialists will undoubtedly significantly accelerate their solving. We do hope that both published materials and application of developed by us diagnostic test systems will improve the remedial-diagnostic process and greatly help our patients. 

Head of the Association of infectiologists of the Republic of Belarus,
head of the Department of infectious diseases EI «Vitebsk State Medical University»,
Dr. habil., professor 

V.M.Semenov