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Background: Drug addiction is one of the alarming public health and social problems in Afghanistan and around the world. Addiction denotes the habitual use or the physical or mental dependence on narcotic drugs or psychotropic substances. Methods: Drug addicts who were admitted to six public addicts' rehabilitation centers in Herat, Afghanistan between March and July 2019 were recruited for this descriptive study. A total of 299 drug addicts were included in this study. A 77-item questionnaire containing three subscales: 39 items for personal information, 32 items for drug use, and 6 items for dependence and treatment subscale were validated and used for data collection. IBM SPSS Statistics for Windows v.22.0 was used for data analyses. Findings: The median age of the participants was 30 years. Of all participants, 79.1% were male, 56.6% were illiterate, and 1.7% were university graduates. In this study, 44.8% of the participants used heroin, 20.7% used opium and 15.4% used methamphetamine. Almost half of the participants (49.5%) declared that at least one member of their families was a drug user. Of the 299 drug users included in this study, 64.9% stated that at least one person close to them (except family members) used drugs. Over two-thirds of the participants (78.4%) had easy access to drugs, 26.8% had broken laws for money/ drugs at least once. Conclusion: This study revealed that male illiterate teenagers living in low-economic nuclear families were more vulnerable to drug use in Herat, Afghanistan. The most common reasons for drug use were curiosity, peer influence, and seeking pleasure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Nutrition is an integral part of growth and development for all children. It is reported that the dietary behaviors and metabolic conditions in children with autism show many differences with respect to normal children. Objectives: This study was conducted with the aim of determining the feeding behaviors of the autistic and non-autistic children and their parent's feeding behavior. Design and Sample: Comparative - descriptive study of the parents of 73 autistic children are involved as case group and the parents of 82 non - autisitic children. Results: No significant difference in the behaviors of the parents except for their encouraging nutrition behavior (t = 7.8, p <.05) was received as a result of the analysis whether there was a statistical difference between the nutrition and feeding behaviors of children with autism and normal development children and their parents, which was one of the questions of the study. Conclusion: This study showed that under the scope of primary care and health nurses working at schools, should not ignore that particularly those with special needs, all parents may have problems at this point and that they should provide effective counseling in all settings and schools where they offer health care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Drug addiction is one of the alarming public health and social problems in Afghanistan and around the world. Addiction denotes the habitual use or the physical or mental dependence on narcotic drugs or psychotropic substances., Methods: Drug addicts who were admitted to six public addicts' rehabilitation centers in Herat, Afghanistan between March and July 2019 were recruited for this descriptive study. A total of 299 drug addicts were included in this study. A 77-item questionnaire containing three subscales: 39 items for personal information, 32 items for drug use, and 6 items for dependence and treatment subscale were validated and used for data collection. IBM SPSS Statistics for Windows v.22.0 was used for data analyses., Findings: The median age of the participants was 30 years. Of all participants, 79.1% were male, 56.6% were illiterate, and 1.7% were university graduates. In this study, 44.8% of the participants used heroin, 20.7% used opium and 15.4% used methamphetamine. Almost half of the participants (49.5%) declared that at least one member of their families was a drug user. Of the 299 drug users included in this study, 64.9% stated that at least one person close to them (except family members) used drugs. Over two-thirds of the participants (78.4%) had easy access to drugs, 26.8% had broken laws for money/drugs at least once., Conclusion: This study revealed that male illiterate teenagers living in low-economic nuclear families were more vulnerable to drug use in Herat, Afghanistan. The most common reasons for drug use were curiosity, peer influence, and seeking pleasure., (© 2022 Kerman University of Medical Sciences.)

Raising the price of tobacco products has been shown to reduce tobacco consumption in the United States and other high-income countries, and evidence of this impact has been growing for low- and middle-income countries as well. Turkey is a middle-income country surveyed by the Global Adult Tobacco Survey (GATS) twice in a 4-year period, in 2008 and 2012. During this time, the country introduced a policy raising its Special Consumption Tax on Tobacco and implemented a comprehensive tobacco control program banning smoking in public places, banning advertising, and introducing graphic health warnings. The higher tobacco tax took effect in early 2010, allowing sufficient time for subsequent changes in prices and smoking to be observed by the time of the 2012 GATS. This report uses data from GATS Turkey to examine how cigarette prices changed after the 2010 tax increase, describe the temporally associated changes in smoking prevalence, and learn whether this smoking prevalence changed more in some demographic groups than others. From 2008 to 2012, the average price paid for cigarettes increased by 42.1%, cigarettes became less affordable, and smoking prevalence decreased by 14.6%. The largest reduction in smoking was observed among persons with lower socioeconomic status (SES), highlighting the potential role of tax policy in reducing health disparities across socioeconomic groups.

Although the physical activity is a very basic lifestyle activity, the physical inactivity has been estimated to cause 1.9 million deaths worldwide annually, according to the 2002 World Health Organization (WHO) Report. In this cross-sectional study, we aimed to determine the frequency of and factors influencing regular exercise among elders living in the catchment area (CA) of a primary health care unit (PHCU) of a district in Ankara. The district has 7 subregions and 50 people were interviewed from each region. From the total number of elderly in the region, these 350 were selected for the study sample. Five of the authors collected data by a self-administered questionnaire. The dependent variable of the study was "doing physical activity", and there were various independent variables including sociodemographic characteristics and risky health behaviors, etc. Significantly positive associations were determined between "not doing regular exercise" and age of 65 years of older (odds ratio (OR)=1.059, 95% confidence interval (CI)=1.010-1.110; p=0.018), female gender (OR=1.992, 95% CI=1.245-3.185; p=0.004), presence of a chronic disease (OR=2.704, 95% CI=1.444-5.066; p=0.002), and lower/higher body mass index (BMI) (OR=2.568, 95% CI=1.573-4.192; p<0.001).

Adolescence is a transition period between childhood and adulthood in which physical, sexual and psychosocial changes occur. Sexually Transmitted Infections (STI) are the most common reproductive health problems adolescents face. Peer education is a very useful method in adolescents' education, especially on risk factors and risk taking behaviors. This peer education intervention study, including two base line studies (one before and one after the intervention), was conducted in four classes of an Anatolian high school in Ankara in 2000. The aim of the study was to evaluate the success of the peer education model. There was a significant difference in the general scores of the students before (29.52; SD = 4.38) and after (31.89; SD = 4.96) education by peer educators (p = 0.000). This study might have assisted the study population in establishing safe sex practices for a healthy sexual future.