:This cross-sectional study was carried out among 1000 children between 10 months to 5 years of age during November 2004 to February 2005 attended in the department of pediatrics, Dhaka Medical College Hospital (DMCH) with different childhood illness. Aim of study was to know the Immunization (EPI) coverage, dropout rate and factors influencing dropout. According to parent's statement, 82.5% of the children were fully, 16.1% were partially and 1.4% were non-immunized. Specific immunization coverage revealed that, 97.3% were immunized with BCG, 96.7% with DPT1/OPV1, 92.9% with DPT2/OPV2, 91% with DPT3/OPV3 & 84% with measles vaccine. Among the BCG vaccinated children 91.77% had BCG scar. Drop out of DPT1-DPT3 was 5.78% & DPT1-measles was 12.88%. The main reason found for non-immunization were lack of faith in programme (57.1%), lack of awareness (21.4%), and fear of side effects (21.4%), whereas lack of awareness (41.6%) and illness of child (32.9%) played role behind drop out. Drop out cases were found to be associated with female sex, parent's illiteracy, higher number of children in the family and father's occupation (p<0.001), whereas mothers occupation had no independent effect on coverage (p>0.05). The study findings suggested that despite the effort taken by Government and NGOs to expand coverage, dropout rates are unacceptably high. To combat this challenge counseling and motivation on EPI, improvement of information system, health education and training of health workers are required.

:A prescription order is a written instruction of doctors to pharmacist to supply drugs in particular form to a patient and the directions to the patients regarding the use of medicines. This study was undertaken to observe the prescribing patterns of the private practitioners in Bangladesh, 430 prescriptions were collected randomly from Dhaka city and analyzed using WHO/INRUD indicators. There were average 3.40 drugs per prescription. Drugs were prescribed in generic name only in 0.20%. About 46.31% drugs were prescribed from the Essential Drug List, only 19% of prescriptions were complete in respect to patient medication information. Antibiotics were prescribed in 70.33% of the prescriptions; injections were prescribed in about 8.35% of the prescriptions.

Bangladesh Journal of Medicine, Vol 23 No 2, 2012, Page 62-66 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3329/bjmed.v23i2.14986

:Lepra Reactions (LR) comprises immunologically mediated inflammatory states that cause considerable morbidity. Type-2 LR occurs exclusively in patients with the lepromatous end of the leprosy spectrum (BL-LL). In 90% of the cases it follows during or after completion of chemotherapy, generally within 2 years. Here we report a case of type-2 LR. He is a twenty years old fisherman with history of hypopigmented skin lesion 3 years back and was treated as a case of lepromatous Leprosy (LL). After six months of completion of treatment he developed type-2 LR presenting with recurrent bouts of fever, polyarthritis, erythema nodusum, orchitis, mononeuritis multiplex and was treated in Faridpur Medical College Hospital (FMCH) on three occasions within last one and half years.