My name is Jigar and I’m 20 years old. I am a student. I like sports from the very beginning and it has been my habit to play cricket. I have never had more than 3-4 days of illness in my life. It all starts at the end of 2018. Suddenly I feel pain around the perineum area. I go to the doctor and tell him about my problem. Some antibiotics are given and he says that there is a normal infection and it will be fine. After taking those antibiotics, my pain reduces somewhat but after some time the pain becomes a lot and after every day this pain keeps on increasing. I start having difficulty in urination and the next day I go to the doctor again and after doing normal sonography, the doctor tells me everything is normal. Again prescribing antibiotics, but I still did not understand what is happening with me. My urination problem increased and after two days my urine was totally blocked. I was admitted to the hospital in emergency and my bladder was emptied by applying a catheter. After this I am referred to the urologist. The urologist gives me for 5 days antibiotics and after 5 days the catheter was removed. During this time, I have different types of tests all of which are negatives. After that, I am given a 1 month antibiotics course. Urination starts slowly and next time I see him, the doctor tells me that you suffer from prostatitis. And in my prostate fluid test, E coli bacteria comes up and this bacteria is resistant to many antibiotics. He told me that I was suffering from bacterial prostatitis. After that I take different types of antibiotics for 6 months but I do not get any benefit. Doctor told me that we can only try these antibiotics for this condition.

After that, I started reading on the internet about this disease by myself. I joined a group about prostatitis in Facebook. I came to know about phage therapy and talked to Pranav Johri, who had gone through this terrible disease himself and got cured by phage therapy and now he helps patients who are suffering from bacterial infections which are resistant to antibiotics. And he helped me to take this therapy. With his help, I sent my sample Georgia at Eliava phage therapy center and there are three bacteria found in my reports. One of the bacteria that was in all three of my samples (urine, prostate fluid, semen) was sensitive to the standard phages. I started this treatment on 20th August. Till today I have completed more than half the course of my phage therapy. After starting it, I have felt a lot of difference – now my pain is reduced, the problem of urine frequency is quite relaxed. I hope to get well soon and live my life without the problem. I am not 100% cured yet, but i feel relief and will continue this treatment of phages till I finish the full course.

In this entire experience, the process of sending samples out of India was a challenging task for me, and it took a long time for reports to come. If testing with phages become possible in India, then all of us who are suffering from bacterial infection that is resistant to antibiotics will be helped. It will be nothing less than a miracle. I hope this testing will be available soon in India.