AbstractThe advances in medical technology in recent years has brought highly progressive developments into diagnostic microbiology. Therefore, it is not feasible to enumerate all the recent advances in clinical microbiology; attempts are made here to discuss only those developments of clinical relevance.The two major aspects of advances in microbiology are the discovery or isolation of new pathogens and the breakthrough in new technology. Of equal importance are some known pathogens which have taken on new roles either as the cause of a new clinical syndrome or as the leading cause of a known clinical syndrome.