The current outbreak of the novel coronavirus also known as COVID-19 was declared as a public health emergency by the WHO where over a million people have been affected by the disease with over 50000 deaths till date. Social distancing is a method to minimize crowd interactions and prevent the spread of disease within groups of people. This is a common practice which has been carried out over generations to minimize the spread of virus by limiting its reproduction rate (R0) among communities. The article focuses on how social distancing has been used to deal previous pandemics globally and the issues that needs to be addressed to tackle the COVID-19 threat.

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Background: Since early nineties investigators in Sri Lanka have noticed an alarmingly high incidence of a new form of chronic kidney disease of uncertain etiology (CKDu) in North Central Region of the country. The purpose of the present study was to assess the treatment response profile of a selected traditional medicine used for Chronic Kidney Disease of unknown etiology in Sri Lanka. Methods: A follow-up study was performed with Chronic Kidney Disease of unknown patients receiving a selected traditionalmedicine in Sri Lanka. Socio-demographic characteristics and anthropometric measurements were documented. Blood and urine samples were collected for biochemical analysis. Multistate Markov model was used to estimate rates of transition between stages of chronic diseases. Results: Anthropometric and biochemical parameters of 96 CKDu patients and 20 normal individuals were recorded in a period of six months. Serum creatinine, urine micro albumin, Albumin creatinine ratio and Systolic Blood pressure values were significantly decreased in the six-month study period. eGFR value was significantly increased over the six-month study period. Positive correlations were identified between ACR-Micro albumin, ACR-BMI and ACR-eGFR while e-GFR-serum creatinine, e-GFR-micro albumin and ACR-serum creatinine showed negative correlations. Conclusions: A significant improvement in both biochemical and anthropometric parameters were observed among patients who underwent Sri Lankan traditional medicine treatment. Continuous follow up programs are important to improve biochemical and physical parameters as well as their quality of life.

Background -Chronic kidney disease with unknown aetiology (CKDu) is a progressing disease which is affecting many Sri Lankans' yearly, this disease is slow progressive, irreversible and asymptomatic disease. Patients suffering from CKDu over the past two decades have been evaluated using the estimated glomerular filtration rate (e-GFR). This is the standard test performed under WHO guidelines to investigate and grade the CKDu, and this creatinine clearance is measured in this in order to grade the patient. Backache has been a common symptom presented in most of the chronic kidney disease patients (CKD), patients with CKDu are liable to get backache due to the renal failure that takes place (Jayathilake et al., 2013;Redmon et al., 2016). Objective -To detect a correlation between serum creatinine values and level of backachepresented in the patient.Method -Using an interview based questionnaire to assess patients' body condition and the degree of backache is assessed, 59 patients were part of the study for a period of five months and had an average age of 60.3 years. The questionnaire answers are scaled into four main types of backache from the least to the most painful based on the pain scale adapted from Kapkia. Serum creatinine is measured using an automated analyzer which is measured using Jaffe's reaction. Using Pearson R correlation, the relationship was determined between serum creatinine and backache (Kafkia et al., 2011). Results -The results were obtained for 58 patients (n=58), where the mean backache score was 2.30 and mean serum creatinine value 2.77. The Pearson R value obtained was 0.01 which is indicating almost no relationship between backache and serum creatinine. Patients with stage 3 kidney disease (n=14) had an average E-GFR of 38.0, stage 4 (n=38) with 22.3 and stage 5 (n=6) with 14.0.Conclusion -Backache can be used an indicator of CKDu since it is presented in most patients' suffering from the disease but unable to be used to determine the stage of CKDu suffered by the patient due to the external causes that leads to backache. Several predisposing factors such as temperature, water source and agricultural activity can influence the backache.

Chronic kidney disease of unknown origin (CKDu) is a global burden among the agricultural communities, this is a non-communicable disease (NCD) which is asymptomatic and irreversible until latter stages of the disease. The disease has no common features unlike chronic kidney diseases (CKD’s) making early detection impossible in the patients. The most recent form of CKDu was reported in India, known as the Indian CKDu in late 2010’s. In Sri Lanka, CKDu is highly prevalent in the north central province of the country with nearly15.1%-22.9% presented with the disease. This region is a dry-zone in which agricultural and farming activities are carried out as the main occupation. Several studies have been carried out linking CKDu to various factors such as heavy metals in water, agrochemicals, heat, dehydration and socio-demographics in NCP. Despite several researches being conducted none of them were able to prove the root cause and causative factors of the disease. Using the available articles online, studies from countries such as India, Nicaragua, Sri Lanka and South America were chosen in which heat stress, dehydration, heavy metal involvement, agrochemicals were common causative factors reported in these geographical locations. Several studies analyzed indicate that the affected CKDu population were part of the agricultural community in rural areas with less or no proper high school education and family history with CKDu. Recent findings do suggest that a combination study involving socio-demographical data and geographical data will help to end the CKDu debate worldwide and provide new insights into early diagnosis.

Health and well-being of individuals is an essential part of a human’s life, with increasing age we as humans are prone to be affected by various complications that can affect our human body. For decades, communicable diseases were the main causes of death around the world from the early 1900 outbreak of the Spanish Flu to the more recent COVID-19 outbreak in the 21st Century [1]. However, over the years a common trend has been observed globally where the rise of Non-Communicable Diseases also known as NCD’s has impacted people both mentally as well as financially. NCD’s are diseases “that are not transmissible from one person to another”, unlike communicable diseases there are various forms and types of NCD’s which are caused predominantly by risk factors associated to the disease and genetics [2]....

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COVID-19 has become a part of everyone's day-to-day life, since the outbreak in 2019 the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has caused more than 4.5 million deaths with over 200 million cases reported globally. Currently, the number of infections and deaths are gradually lowering in different countries however the underlying challenges still exist. COVID-19 threatens human life, social functioning and development. Although numerous studies have been carried out in the past to highlight the key challenges very limited studies have been conducted from an ordinary person's viewpoint. In the fight against COVID-19, humanity has been pushed to a level which cannot be accepted where establishing that balance is a priority. This study focuses on highlighting the common issues faced by the ordinary public in the current era. Five key areas were identified to be the most essential; education, technological adaptation, transportation, mental health and gender-based violence (GBV).