No abstract

Background: In India, despite improvements in access to health care, social inequalities are gross in both rural and urban areas. Many middle and lower socio economic class families are crushed under debts at the time of hospitalization due to lack of health insurance. Health financing is an important part of broader efforts to ensure social protection in health. However "health insurance" is still an unknown word for most rural people. So this study was undertaken with the objective to assess the awareness about Health Insurance in rural areas and to describe the sociodemographic characteristic of respondents. Methods: A cross sectional community based study was done with sample size of 290 households estimated by using 25% national coverage according to Public Health Foundation of India. The study was conducted between July 2014 to August 2014. 290 families were covered from two Primary Health Centres which come under field practice area of our medical college. A pretested semi structured questionnaire was used to collect data. Data was entered in excel sheet and analysed using SPSS version 17 software. Results: Among 290 respondents 72.5% were in age group of 26-45 years, 69.4% were female, 82.1% belonged to below poverty line, 72.4% were from nuclear family and about 81% of respondents were aware of Health Insurance. Conclusions: Awareness about Health Insurance among rural population was satisfactory. Attention for implementation of health insurance policies has to be paid more importance than only awareness.

According to World Health Organization (WHO), nearly 1.3 million people die worldwide every year as a result of RTA this is one person killed every 25 second, while 20-50 million suffer non-fatal injuries with many sustaining disability this sums to be the 6th leading cause of death overall and prime cause of death among young people aged 15-29 year and cost countries 1-3% of their Gross Domestic Product (GDP), affecting them economically as well. 1-3 In India years 18-45 accounted for more than half (61.2%) of all persons killed in accidents during 2014. 4 In 2014, total number of RTA cases reported in India being 4,50,898 has increased by 1.8% compared to 2013 with 4,43,001 cases while the deaths have a much concerning increase during 2014 with 1,41,526 deaths by 2.9% compared with 2013 with 1,37,423 deaths. 4 The rate being significant at 51 cases per hour where in 16 persons were killed. The state of Karnataka alone has an ABSTRACT Background: Over the past years, several efforts are made to establish relationship between personality characteristics and accident proneness with many researchers pursuing to construct accident proneness with personality. Current trend with exponential growth in automobile population has demanded Researchers to study about accident proneness among those drivers. With this background the following study was done with an objective of to explore the personality correlates of accident-proneness of truck drivers passing by State highway-17 of Mandya city in Indian. Methods: A cross sectional descriptive study was done in SH 17 Bangalore-Mysore highway among 200 truck drivers. The subjects included in the study were the truck drivers who were passing by SH-17 and who were able to understand Kannada or Hindi language. The data was collected by personal interview method by using semistructured questionnaire for socio-demographic information and standard big five personality test questionnaire for personality trait of drivers. Results: Out of 200 drivers 126 were accident prone and 74 were non accident prone drivers. Total driving hours in a day was found to be significantly higher in accident prone driver than non-accident prone. With respect to personality it was found that openness to experience and emotional instability/neuroticism was significantly associated with accident proneness. Conclusions: In conclusion it can be said that personality trait plays an important role in accident. In order to prevent such accident it is advisable to screen such people at the time of issue of driving license for heavy vehicle itself.

No abstract

Background: This study was conducted on 168 patients to assess nicotine dependence in tobacco smokers and to compare their personality profiles with non-smokers. Methods: The patients were grouped into nicotine dependent and non-nicotine dependent based on the DSM IV-TR, Personality profile assessed with the big five personality test. informed consent was taken before collecting the data. The test of significance used was independent sample t-test and one way ANOVA.Results: A total of 168 participants were included in this study, comprised of 84 smokers (50%) and 84 non-smokers (50%). Smokers revealed a higher score in neuroticism compared to non-smokers (25.19+4.33 vs. 24.07+3.99), higher extroversion (19.02+4.67 vs. 18.64+6.18) lower Conscientiousness (20.30+6.64 vs. 21.37+5.18) and lower openness to experience (22.14+6.24 vs. 22.75+5.25). mean score of neuroticism is significantly more in moderate (26.12+5.50) level nicotine dependence, openness to experience showed significantly high (28.4+2.31) level nicotine dependence. 41.6% of smokers belong to low to moderate level ND, 30.9% moderate level ND, 22.6% high-level ND, and 0.04% low-level ND. Neuroticism showed health concerns as the reason to quit smoking than those who did not. Conclusions: 39.2% of the participants did not even attempt to quit smoking and the most common reason to quit smoking was health concerns and social factors so it is important to educate these individuals and motivate them to quit smoking. Major causes of relapse were social factors and media/advertisement. Hence strict rules against the display of smoking can help to prevent relapse