Scaling up resilient agricultural practices, technologies and services in the vulnerable areas of India

The brochure contains details of a project intervention funded by USAID, to scale out the Climate-Smart Villages in three Indian states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh

Analysis of characteristics of semantics of spoken language in normally developing Hindi speaking children

Background: There appears to be a lack of database of and dearth of studies focusing on the characteristics of semantics in Hindi speaking school aged children. Such a data base will be useful for building vocabulary for language disordered children and for constructing AAC boards for non-verbal children. Hence, it is essential to study the characteristics of semantics of normally developing children. This paper focuses on describing the semantic characteristics of spoken language in Hindi speaking children.Methods: 200 normally developing Hindi speaking children within the age group of 3 - 7 years were shown and instructed to describe three validated pictures of daily events. The responses were recorded and transcribed.  Analyses included type-token ratio, frequency of occurrence and comparisons between different word classes.Results: Percentage of nouns is highest followed by verbs, pronouns, adjectives. Frequency of occurrence of words increases with increase in age. The common words with high frequency of occurrence are hƐ, hũ, rΛhe, rΛha, rΛhi, dƷa, ɔr, khel, gaɖi, log, pe, ke.  There appears to be marked increase in different classes of words, one at 4 yrs of age (after Sr. KG) and other at 6 yrs of age (standard I).Conclusions: One of the highlighting features of this study is the huge database of semantics (of spoken language) collected from 200 school going children.  Creating such a database and utilizing it for assessing language of the disordered population appears to be the need of the hour.

Bridging the Gap of Skilled Surgeons in Low and Middle Income Countries Using ICT Based Tools : A Case Study in Super-Speciality Training

Introduction: Over the last two decades, advancement of super specialised surgical disciplines has shown improved health outcome, in particular quality and safety. Although medical technology has developed to meet diagnostics and therapeutic needs, there is a scarcity of trained human resources in advanced specialities in low and middle income countries (LMICs). Innovative methods are needed to educate and train people at their workplaces using collaborative technologies and networks. Methods: Over the last 15 years, two general surgeons in Cuttack have been telementored from Lucknow 1,163 km away, using collaborative technologies to develop Endocrine Surgery. This study reviews the last 11 years of the service which includes a clinical decision support system and treatment planning advice using real time videoconferencing. Results: Over the last 11 years, 199 endocrine surgeries per annum were performed with most being thyroid cases as compared with 119 surgeries per annum during the previous five years. Parathyroid and adrenal cases increased significantly during this period (p <0.001). Rates of temporary and permanent vocal cord palsy (1.7% and 0%), hypocalcaemia (5.9% and 1.1%) were comparable with high volume centres. Based on the quantum, safety and quality outcome of endocrine surgery the provincial government has approved creation of a super-speciality department of endocrine surgery in Cuttack. Conclusion: Sustained engagement using telementoring can transfer surgical skills to needy surgeons and enable them to match the expertise of mentors. This model can be replicated in other specialities in a cost effective way to develop specialised human resources for healthcare, in particular in LMICs

The Epidemiology of Herpes Simplex Virus Type-2 Infection among Pregnant Women in Rural Mysore Taluk, India

To assess the prevalence and determinants of herpes simplex virus type 2 (HSV-2) infections among pregnant women attending mobile antenatal health clinic in rural villages in Mysore Taluk, India. Methods. Between January and September 2009, 487 women from 52 villages participated in this study. Each participant consented to provide a blood sample for HSV-2 and HIV testing and underwent an interviewer-administered questionnaire. Results. HSV-2 prevalence was 6.7% (95% confidence interval (CI) 4.4–9.0), and one woman tested positive for HIV.The median age of women was 20 years and 99% of women reported having a single lifetime sex partner.Women whose sex partner traveled away from home had 2.68 (CI: 1.13–6.34) times the odds of being HSV-2 seropositive compared to women whose sex partner did not travel. Having experienced genital lesions was also associated with HSV-2 infection ( value = 0.08). Conclusion.The 6.7% HSV-2 prevalence was similar to results obtained in studies among pregnant women in other parts of India. It appeared that most women in this study contracted HSV-2 from their spouses and few regularly used condoms. This finding highlights the need for public health policies to increase awareness and education about prevention methods among women and men living in rural India

Learning internal iliac artery ligation and pelvic ureter course through cadaveric dissections

Background: Few surgical procedures, although vital, are not learnt and mastered during postgraduate courses in Obstetrics and Gynecology. Internal iliac artery ligation and tracing course of ureter are few of such surgical procedures. Cadaveric dissection sessions organized during postgraduate courses and as CME sessions (continued medical education) have proved useful in learning such unlearnt procedures. This article shares experiences from teaching internal iliac artery ligation, pelvic ureter course tracing and principles of many other unusual gynaecological surgical procedures to Obstetrics and Gynecology specialists and postgraduate students through CME programs involving cadaveric dissection.Methods: This involved organizing and conducting four cadaveric dissection CME workshops at three different teaching institutions. The components of these CMEs were lectures with power point presentations and two-way audio-visual interactive sessions while pelvic anatomy was demonstrated on cadavers through live dissections. Each CME was concluded by tactile experience to each delegate by handling the dissected cadavers; this was made possible by limiting delegate registration to 50 at each CME.Results: The surgical skills of internal iliac artery ligation and tracing course of pelvic ureter, which are not adequately and confidently learnt in routine postgraduate tenure, could be effectively transferred through cadaveric dissection.Conclusions: Revisiting anatomy dissection halls helps in learning rare but lifesaving surgical techniques. This can be achieved by arranging cadaveric dissection CMEs for practicing specialists. Such CMEs should be organized regularly and should be integrated into postgraduate curriculum

Performance of BVBlue Rapid Test in Detecting Bacterial Vaginosis among Women in Mysore, India

Bacterial vaginosis (BV) is the most common cause of abnormal vaginal discharge in reproductive age women. It is associated with increased susceptibility to HIV/STI and adverse birth outcomes. Diagnosis of BV in resource-poor settings like India is challenging. With little laboratory infrastructure there is a need for objective point-of-care diagnostic tests. Vaginal swabs were collected from women 18 years and older, with a vaginal pH \u3e 4.5 attending a reproductive health clinic. BV was diagnosed with Amsel’s criteria, Nugent scores, and the OSOM BVBlue test. Study personnel were blinded to test results. There were 347 participants enrolled between August 2009 and January 2010. BV prevalence was 45.1% (95% confidence interval (CI): 41.5%–52.8%) according to Nugent score. When compared with Nugent score, the sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, negative predictive value for Amsel’s criteria and BVBlue were 61.9%, 88.3%, 81.5%, 73.7% and 38.1%, 92.7%, 82.1%, 63.9%, respectively. Combined with a “whiff” test, the performance of BVBlue increased sensitivity to 64.4% and negative predictive value to 73.8%. Despite the good specificity, poor sensitivity limits the usefulness of the BVBlue as a screening test in this population. There is a need to examine the usefulness of this test in other Indian populations

Information retrieval in two-tier VANET/P2P using RSU as a superpeer

Since traffic is increasing considerably day by day so information exchange for vehicular environment is very important to increase safety and to provide proper guidance of road side services available to driver during journey. Because of increased attraction towards Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) services it is required to design a system which can retrieve information very efficiently. A two-tier VANET/P2P system is basically the integration of two different type of services which are used for information exchange. Low-tier vehicular Ad-hoc networks (VANETs) can be used for achieving low lookup latency whereas high-tier infrastructure based Peer-to-Peer (P2P) can be used for increasing lookup success rate. In proposed protocol distance based reachability has been used. Reachability reduces lookup latency while maintaining moderate lookup success rate. Parameters for proposed adaptive lookup two-tier mechanism have been compared with the conventional two-tier lookup mechanism using Network Simulator (NS 2.34).