<p class="abstract"><strong>Background:</strong> Understanding of health seeking behaviour (HSB) is essential to provide need based health care services to the population. Many factors like sex, age, type of illness, access to services and perceived quality of the services, influences the health seeking behavior. This study assessed the HSB among rural population of a coastal area in Tamil Nadu.</p><p class="abstract"><strong>Methods:</strong> A community based descriptive study was done in a rural coastal area of Villupuram district in Tamil Nadu state of India. Using simple random sampling method, 559 participants were selected. A pre-tested structured questionnaire was used to collect the data. Information about socio-demographic characteristics, presence of acute or chronic illness, health care seeking behavior and reasons for non-utilization of particular health facilities etc. was obtained. Chi square test was applied to find the association of health care seeking behavior with various participant characteristics.  </p><p class="abstract"><strong>Results:</strong> Among 559 study participants, majority (56.4%) visited public health care facilities for various illnesses. Almost one-third of the study participants visited the private health facilities and another 11.6 percent visited other health facilities including pharmacies. Among various causes, febrile illnesses (39.5%) and pain (20.8%) were the most common reasons for visiting a health care facility. Individual’s income was significantly associated with the HSB (p value &lt;0.05). Availability of services, free of cost was reported as most common reason for preferring to the public health facility. On other hand, private practitioners were preferred due to their better availability and quality of care.</p><strong>Conclusions:</strong> Public health care facilities were preferred by due to low cost of services and HSB varies with the type of illness and income of the individuals.

Introduction:According to the 2010 estimates by the World Health Organization, nearly 285 million (4.24% of total population) people of all ages worldwide are visually impaired. Almost 18.9 million children under 15 years of age are visually impaired globally. In developing countries, 7%–31% of childhood blindness and visual impairment is avoidable.Materials and Methods:The study was conducted as a cross-sectional study among 1884 school students in Puducherry, in the age group of 10–14 years. A child with presenting maximum vision ≤6/12 Snellen equivalent in the better eye is considered visually impaired. Data were entered in Microsoft Excel 2013 and analyzed using the statistical software SPSS version 21.0. Chi-square test was applied for testing difference in proportion and a P < 0.05 was considered statistically significant.Results:The overall prevalence of visual impairment (vision ≤6/12) among the study participants was 6.37% (95% confidence interval = 5.27–7.47). The prevalence of visual impairment increased with age and it was found to be high among male students (6.6%) when compared to female students (6%). Presenting vision of 6/6 was observed in 79.8% of the children while with pinhole correction, the proportion increased to 94.6%.Conclusion:The prevalence of visual impairment in our study population was found to be 6.37% and the prevalence was even higher among children who belonged to schools of urban region or private schools. Children with a positive family history of spectacle use were more likely to have visual impairment.

Background and Objectives: Cryptococcosis is an opportunistic mycosis, caused by Cryptococcus neoformans. Crypto- coccal meningitis is one of themost fatal opportunistic infections associated with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection. The aim of this study was  to find the prevalence ofcryptococcal antigenemia in people living with HIV (PLHA) and also to find the prevalence of opportunistic infections among these patients. Materials and Methods: A total of 204 non duplicate samples were collected from people with HIV aged above 18 years. Samples with CD4 count less than300 were included in the study. Cryptococcal antigen detection was done by CrAg Lateral flow assay. Results: None of the patients in our study were positive for cryptococcal antigen. Opportunistic infections were observed in 82 (40.2%) HIV positive patients. Candidiasis, tuberculosis and Pneumocystis jiroveci pneumonia were the most common opportunistic infections. Conclusion: This is the first study from the southern state of Kerala on the prevalence of Cryptococcal antigenemia among HIV positive individuals. Thestudy showed that routine screening for cryptococcal antigen will not be cost effective in our population. Similar to other studies, eventhough candidiasis,tuberculosis and PCP were more commonly seen among people with CD4 count < 200 cells/mm3, there was no statistically significant association.

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