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AIM: A safe injection does no harm; but unsafe injection practices are a plague of many health systems. The most affected category of health care providers are the nursing personnel. METHOD: This hospital based cross sectional observational study was conducted among 80 nurses involved in patient care to assess their knowledge regarding safe injection practices and to assess certain aspects of their practice while administering injection and disposal of the disposables. RESULTS: About 52.5% subjects were protected by hepatitis B vaccination. During the last 6 months, 6.3% nurses got accidental needle stick injury three or more times. About 12.5% study subjects washed their hands with soap and water before administering injection. About 60% of the nursing personnel maintained correct procedure during giving injection; while sterile gloves were used only by 3.7% nurses. During disposal of used needles, in 57.5% cases hub cutters were used, while needles were recapped in 42.5% of cases. Used syringes were disposed off correctly in 41.2% of cases. CONCLUSION: There is a need to educate, train and motivate service providers in proper method of handling injection equipments. A local policy and surveillance programme based on the WHO guidelines might be helpful in this situation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

About 400 million individuals worldwide have been affected by the inherited disorder of glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PD) deficiency that predisposes individuals to neonatal jaundice or hemolytic crisis due to drugs or infections. A descriptive observational study with longitudinal design was undertaken among 109 live newborns, delivered in labor room of IPGME and R, Kolkata during the period from June to August 2009. An objective of the study was to estimate the occurrence of G6PD deficiency among newborns and its association with different socio-demographic, clinical and gestational characteristics. 14.68% newborns were found G6PD deficient. This occurrence was not significantly related to gender, religion and ethnicity, consanguineous marriage of the parents, gestational age and birth weight of the baby. Development of severe jaundice (total serum bilirubin >15 mg/dl) was found 23.8% among G6PD deficient babies and 12.5% among non-G6PD deficient. This difference was statistically not significant.

Cardiovascular diseases, mostly a lifestyle related disease is going to be an epidemic in near future. Eighty per cent deaths due to cardiovascular diseases occur in low and middle-income group of people. A cross-sectional observational study was undertaken among 208 care-providers of different departments of the Institute of Postgraduate Medical Education and Research, Kolkata to assess the prevalence of general, physical activity related and dietary risk factors. The study subjects were classified into medical (doctors), auxiliary (nurses, technical staffs) and supportive (peons, sweepers) categories according to their job responsibilities. With the help of risk factor scoring system developed by the investigators the prevalence of different category of risk factors were compared among different categories of care-providers in association with some related biological characteristics. The general risk factors found significantly increased (p < 0.001) with increase in age. The physical activity related risk scores were more in females than males. But the difference was not statistically significant. The supportive staffs had significantly higher general risk factors than doctors and auxiliary staffs. Regarding physical activity related risk factors it was significantly lower in supportive staffs than the other two categories. The picture was different in case of dietary risk factors that were found to be significantly lowest among auxiliary staffs.

Burn injuries constitute a major public health problem. A hospital-based descriptive observational study was conducted among 83 burn patients admitted in the Institute of Post Graduate Medical Education and Research, Kolkata in 2008 to assess the demographic and clinical profile of burn patients and to study the medicolegal and social causes. Majority of patients were females (61.5%), literates (78.4%), hindus (79.5%) and in the age group of 20-39 years (56.6%). Occupation-wise housewives were 36.1% followed by students (16.8%).Majority of the cases (61.4%) were accidental whereas suicidal and homicidal cases were 18.1% and 20.5% respectively. According to the size 25.3% patients had 20% -39% of body surface burns and 21.7% had 80% or more burns. 53% of the cases were given blood transfusion and 23.5% died in the study period.