No abstract

Background: Global prevalence of hypertension in the year 2000 was estimated to be 26% with approximately 1 billion people affected by it. By 2025 this has been projected to increase to 29% increase to 29%, expecting greater proportion of population will be consists of elderly people. Limited qualitative studies on hypertension are available in India. We intended to conduct a qualitative study on the perception about hypertension causes, complications and barrier to get medications, among known hypertensive patients residing in rural area or south India.Methods: A qualitative study has been undertaken in August 2016 by the interns posted in Rural Health Training Centre of Pondicherry Institute of Medical Sciences (RHTC-PIMS). The study was completed after conducting in depth interview among 40 randomly selected known hypertensive patients. All the interviews were audio taped. Verbatim were done from the recording in local language (Tamil) and then translated to English. Coding and thematic analysis was done by analysis team consisting of one Assistant Professor in Community Medicine, one medical social worker (MSW) and three interns.Results: There is a huge lack of awareness about the causes of hypertension among the patients. There is also a huge lack of awareness about the complications of hypertension, among hypertensive patients. This may result in poor adherence to medication and prevention of complications. Almost all the patients reported that they were following Allopathic medications and getting medications from government primary health centre. There is a need to visit the health centre every week, as the medicines provided to them are only weekly basis.Conclusions: There is a huge lack of knowledge about hypertension among known hypertensive patients. There is a need for a holistic approach in managing hypertensive patients in rural area in India.

Introduction: Health-related quality of life (HRQOL) is a measure of an individual’s psychosocial, emotional, and physical well-being. Around 1 in 20 children are less than 15 years of age and are living with a moderate-to-severe form of disability. Thus, our study aims to determine the HRQOL of intellectual disabled (ID) children attending a special school in Puducherry and to determine the socio-demographic factors influencing the level of HRQOL. Methodology: A cross-sectional analytical study was conducted among 350 ID children attending a selected special school in Puducherry over 1 year. By the universal sampling method, all the caregivers of ID children were recruited and the parent proxy form of Pediatric Quality of life Inventory scale version 4.0 (PedsQL ver 4.0) was used to assess the level of HRQOL of ID children. The data were analyzed using the Statistical Package for Social Science version 16.0 (SPSS ver. 16.0) and the statistical significance was set at P value <0.05. Results: Among the 350 respondents, a majority of the caregivers were mothers (78.9%) and 65.7% were homemakers by occupation. Most of the respondents were from the nuclear family (77.7%) and 55.1% were from urban areas. The mean age of ID children was 12 (±3.8) years; 61.2% were males and 40.8% of the children had a moderate form of ID. Conclusion: The HRQOL of ID children is found to be lower. The factors influencing the lower HRQOL were age, the intelligent quotient (IQ) of ID children, and type of marriage of the caregivers.

Background: In India, 17 per cent or nearly 50,000 of 2.89 lakh women died as result of complication due to pregnancy in 2013. In past decade, many studies have revealed low utilization of health services by different segments of society for varying reasons. This study was conducted to assess the utilization pattern of ANC services by the pregnant women in a rural area. The objectives of the study were to assess the pattern of utilization of ANC services by pregnant and recently delivered women; to study the association between socio-demographic factors and utilization pattern among recently delivered women. Methods: A community based cross-sectional study conducted at the rural health training centre in Kancheepuram district, Tamil Nadu among pregnant women and recently delivered women using pre-designed and pre-tested questionnaire. The entire registered pregnant mothers were included for the study and survey was done through house to house visit and the analysis was done using SPSS 21. Results: Out of 170 study participants, majority 132 (77.6%) of them had their antenatal check-up at primary health centre, 138 (81.2%) have received the IFA tablets and 139 (81.8%) had early antenatal registration. And most of the study participants 108 (63.5%) did not utilize anganwadi for health education and supplementary nutrition. Number of IFA tablets consumption by mothers was significantly associated with literacy and socio-economic status of the mother with p value of 0.03 and 0.002 respectively. Conclusions: Our study results showed that better ANC services utilization pattern in our study area except anganwadi utilization.

Background: Dengue virus can cause a wide range of illness in humans, from unapparent infection, to classic dengue fever and to fatal dengue haemorrhagic fever. Until a vaccine becomes available for public health use, primary prevention of transmission is crucial to decrease the burden of dengue, and control of Aedes is the only available strategy.Methods: The mosquito larval survey was carried out in the month of November 2017 in Echangadu, a coastal village in Puducherry to assess mosquito breeding sources for the presence of dengue vector species. The survey was performed by selecting houses where freshwater was available. For each household, the presence or absence of possible breeding sources were recorded, as well as the presence or absence of mosquito larvae.Results: Of the 102 houses surveyed, 20 of the houses were infested with Aedes larvae. A total of 182 containers were found in these households of which 47 containers were positive for Aedes larvae. Coconut shells, plastic, metal and discarded containers were the most often found breeding sites.Conclusions: The larval surveillance indicators among the households surveyed revealed a very high risk of future dengue outbreak in the village. All the containers examined including those positive for Aedes larvae were safely disposed.

No abstract

To identify currently available measures of Health-related quality of life (HRQOL) for intellectually disabled children and to describe their content. A comprehensive retrieval of the English literature from 2001 to 2021 was done in the PubMed and Google Scholar. The terms ‘Intellectual disability’, ‘Differently abled’, ‘Special children’, ‘Differently challenged’, ‘Mental retardation’, ‘Health-related quality of life’, ‘Quality of life’, ‘Burden of intellectual disability’ and ‘India’ were used to identify measures of HRQOL for children’s with intellectual disability. Several tools were identified to measure HRQOL for children with intellectual disability. Many have parent proxy as well as self-report form with good validity and reliability. Though, they were often developed with minimal involvement from families, focus on functioning rather than wellbeing, and have items that sometimes may cause emotional upset. When children with different health problems are compared, the degree of their particular health condition should be measured. Furthermore, overlap of items seems not to be a problem when the HRQOL of children with intellectually disability is studied. Hence, HRQOL assessments are useful for collecting information beyond the clinical symptoms of a health problem thus improving quality of care.