Background: Cancer is becoming the most important public health burden around the globe. As per the GLOBOCAN 2008 estimates, about 12.7 million cancer cases and 7.6 million cancer deaths were estimated to have occurred in 2008. The burden of cancer cases for India in the year 2020 is calculated to be 1,148,757 (male 534,353; female 614,404) compared to 979,786 in 2010. The pattern of cancer incidence is varying among geographical regions, esophageal cancer for example being high in China, lung cancer in USA, and gallbladder cancer in Chile. The question remains why? Is it due to the diversity in genome pool, food habits, risk factor association and role of genetic susceptibility or some other factors associated with it? In India, the North East (NE)-India region is seeing a marked increase in cancer incidence and deaths, with a very different cancer incidence pattern compared to mainland India. The genome pool of the region is also quite distinct from the rest of India. Northeastern tribes are quite distinct from other groups; they are more closely related to East Asians than to other Indians. In this paper an attempt was made to see whether there is any similarity among the pattern of cancer incidence cases for different sites of NE-India region to South or East-Asia. Materials and Methods: Principal Component Analysis (PCA), Hierarchical Cluster Analysis (HCA), Pearson Correlation coefficient test was assessed to evaluate the linkage of North-East India region to other regions. A p value <0.05 was considered as statistically significant. Results: The results clearly shows that there are similarities in occurrence of cancer incidence patterns for various cancer sites of NE-India with South and East-Asian regions, which may lead to the conclusion that there might be a genetic linkage between these regions.
Background:Anemia is a condition in which the number of red blood cells becomes insufficient to meet the body's physiologic needs. Anemia is one of the major public health problems in India. The aim of this study was to find the prevalence and determinants of anemia among the adult females of tea garden community of Assam.Materials and Methods:A community-based cross-sectional study was conducted among 770 numbers of adult females belonging to the tea garden community. For all the samples, complete blood count, abnormal hemoglobin variants screening by high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), serum iron level, total iron binding capacity (TIBC), and serum ferritin concentrations were determined.Results:Out of 770 patients, 19.7% were severely anemic. Hb S and β-thalassemia were the only hemoglobin types detected in the study. Hemoglobin type, mean corpuscular volume, TIBC, and serum ferritin level were the important determinants of anemia in the present study.Conclusion:To reduce the burden of anemia among the adult females of tea garden community, the females should be screened periodically, and appropriate measures should be taken.
Introduction:To evaluate the role of participatory rural appraisal (PRA) in community based rehabilitation (CBR) to detect and manage childhood blindness from rural community. Methods: Fifteen rural project areas with pre-existing CBR project were shortlisted. Main criteria of this selection were pre-existing CBR project with significant number of children with visual impairment. We have adopted PRA methodology to reach the rural community whilst aiming to detect childhood blindness. PRA approaches were also utilized to achieve immunization, spacing between child birth, proper maternal and child health and overall improvement of lifestyle. Information about the villages was collected from villagers by social mapping performed by the villagers themselves. Student's t test was used to analyze the result. Results: 128 children (CBR program) with visual disability were identified out of which 77.14% were blind and 22.86% had SVI. After adopting PRA approach 84 new cases (p<0.05%) were detected of which 71.43% were blind and 28.57% had SVI. Main causes of blindness were cornea related (31.28%), lens related (21.72%) and buphthalmos (17%). Immunization of child improved from 11% to 81% (p=0.011) over a period of one year. Common practices including food habit, spacing between child births improved. 41% children are mobilized to blind school for rehabilitation. Conclusion: PRA methodology is a new approach in community ophthalmology and is very promising to detect and rehabilitate visually impaired children. PRA is very useful to improve knowledge, to plan rehabilitation as well to treat underlining causes of childhood blindness.
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