Search

Background: Diarrhoea is one of the leading causes of under-five childhood morbidity and mortality in India, despite the availability of easy interventions through oral rehydration at the community level. The level of knowledge varies from country to country and within the country, further variations exist in state, district and sub district level based on difference in socio-demographic characteristics of the population. And based on these variations, different community needs different health education efforts in its extent and approaches. It was therefore relevant to explore the level of awareness about diarrhoea and its management among the mothers who were the first level of caregivers. Objective: To assess the level of knowledge about diarrhoea and oral rehydration therapy among the mothers having their children of 6 months to 5 yrs with diarrhea Materials and methods: It was a facility based cross-sectional descriptive epidemiological study conducted among 62 mothers having their children of 6 months to five years with diarrhoea. Mothers attended a rural hospital under the geographical area of Madhyamgram in North 24 Parganas district of West Bengal, India. Data was collected by face to face interview of the mothers in the outpatient department of the hospital using a pre-designed and pre-tested questionnaire. The analysis was done in Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS), version 20.0 using bivariate and multivariate (multiple logistic regression model) to examine the statistical significance at 95% confidence interval. Results: Mean knowledge score was 7.8 (Range 0-17). Lower knowledge score group (0-8) accounted to 36 persons (37.1%) and higher knowledge group (9-19) accounted to 26 persons (62.9%). Knowledge about alarming symptoms of the dehydration was significantly poor. At the individual level, literacy of women and their caste were strongly associated with the knowledge about diarrhoea and its management. At the household level, the way of the disposal of household garbage was also strongly associated. Conclusion: Considering the poor knowledge of the mothers, the study recommends for extensive health education measures widely in the community with a special focus for the illiterate and socio-economically lower groups, and also for the families having the practice of open garbage disposal. Bangladesh Journal of Medical Science Vol.18(2) 2019 p.267-273

Background: Light pollution is inappropriate or excessive use of artificial light. Nighttime sky radiance is an effective measure to study its effects on individual sleep quality. Objectives: The study is aimed to measure the effect of light pollution on the sleep quality and compare among people residing in selected rural and urban areas of West Bengal, India. Methods: A comparative cross-sectional study was conducted during September–October 2018 in 10 villages of Barasat II block and 10 wards of Kolkata Municipal Corporation. Two hundred and sixty-three participants from urban and 249 participants from rural areas were selected through multi-stage sampling. Data regarding sleep quality and other selected factors were geotagged along with the radiance data. Multi-level linear regression models were built. Results: The mean age of the participants from rural and urban areas were respectively 37.65 (±10.77) years and 38.10 (±11.02) years. Gender-wise the participants were distributed almost evenly in urban and rural areas. Among the urban and rural population, the observed mean global Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index scores were 12.63 (±3.04) and 9.23 (±2.27), respectively. Poorer sleep quality was observed to be statistically significant with increasing level of exposure. Multi-level models show that, at an exposure of >40.0 nW/cm2/sr the adjusted coefficient was 11.52 (95% confidence interval [CI]: 9.65, 13.40) in the overall model and 12.84 (95% CI: 12.31, 13.37) for urban participants. Conclusion: The disturbance in sleep is associated with higher levels of night-time radiance of the sky strongly observed among the urban population.

Background: Overweight among adolescents has high prevalence on the eastern part of India, especially West Bengal. Objectives: The current study was conducted to estimate and compare the effects of different dietary habits and habits related to physical activity in the development of overweight and obesity among rural schoolgoing adolescents. Methods: A prospective repeated measures study was conducted on 645 schoolgoing adolescents from selected rural government-aided schools from June 2017 to December 2017. Dietary habits of the students and physical activity-related factors were the major predictors. Adjusting for the age and sex of the participants, effect of these factors on the development of overweight and obesity was analyzed by generalized estimating equations for 2 repeated measures, taken 6 months apart. Results: Most of the respondents were aged ≥16 years (56.90%), female (52.87%), Hindu (76.74%), from a nuclear family (76.74%), and studying in the secondary level (57.68%). There was a stark rise in proportion of overweight from 0.93% to 7.44%. The prevalence of unhealthy dietary habits was 68.99% at the baseline, and 66.82% on follow-up. The overall prevalence of inadequate physical activity increased to 48.68% from 47.91%. Female gender and older age group were at higher risk of being overweight or obesity. Overall fast food showed highest risk (3.04, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.86–4.95), while among the boys, it was with less vegetable consumption (4.64, 95% CI: 1.84–11.69). Conclusions: Strong evidence was generated of dietary practices being more rigidly related to overweight among the adolescents. Healthy dietary practices coupled with physical activity should be promoted to mitigate the risk of obesity.

Background: Snake bite is a neglected public health problem in India. Very few community based epidemiological studies in India have been published so far on this issue. Most of the studies were carried out on hospital data. Previous community-based survey in the state revealed that only 22% snake bite victims attended hospitals. Objectives: The objective of the present study is to find out the epidemiological profile of snake bite in eight blocks of the South 24-Paraganas district of West Bengal and to explore the under reporting of snake bite deaths in health facilities in that area during the study period. Materials and Methods: A retrospective analysis of snake bite data was carried out from a community-based epidemiological survey on 1.9 million populations. This survey was done door-to-door from January 2009 to October 2010 to get epidemiological profile of snake bite of the previous 2 years. The data of direct survey was compared with the official report of the same area to evaluate the hospital-based data with focus on underreporting of snakebite deaths. Results: A total number of snake bite cases as found in the survey in the study area was 4871. There was a huge gap between the two data (direct survey and official data). Only 7.23% snake bite deaths were officially reported. Only 22.19% of the snake bite victims attended the hospitals. Nearly 65.7% of the snake bite deaths were due to common krait bite, most of them occurring in the months of June to September. Conclusions: Official reporting system is still having a huge deficiency in India. Snake bite needs to get more attention from the health authority.