Battle stations

One morning, Renuka Arora, a 50-year-old regional marketing manager, woke up with red, swollen eyes. The sudden itchiness confounded her, since neither eye had shown any symptom the previous evening. Fearing that it might be a case of conjunctivitis, she wore dark glasses. However, the general physician in her neighbourhood diagnosed it as an eye infection and prescribed Ciplox, an antibiotic. Within 24 hours, the infection had cleared. But was there a need for an antibiotic in the first place, asks Dr Siddharth Chopra, senior scientist and microbiologist, Central Drug Research Institute (CSIR-CDRI), Lucknow.