Care seeking behaviour and various delays in tuberculosis patients registered under RNTCP in Pune city

Introduction: Case finding in tuberculosis is known to be influenced by factors such as patient motivation, care seeking, the degree of diagnostic suspicion by health care provider which could result in a delayed diagnosis. Objective: To determine care seeking behaviour and delay in diagnosis and treatment of new sputum positive tuberculosis patients registered under RNTCP. Material and Methods: Descriptive cross sectional study. 283 new sputum positive tuberculosis patients (?15 years of age) registered during a period of six months at two randomly selected tuberculosis unit of Pune city. Questionnaire by WHO was modified and used. Interviews were conducted in DOT centres. Statistical analysis: Frequency, mean and standard deviation, chi square test. Results: Mean age of patients was 35 (±15) years18% of patients were unemployed and 77% resided in urban slums. The commonest co morbidity in 7.4% and 3.5 % patients was HIV/ AIDS followed by diabetics respectively. Majority of the patients, for the first and second time visited a general practitioner. Median patient, health care system and total delay were 18, 22 and 47 days with mean of 24±21, 32±30 and 56±33 days respectively. Health care system delay was less (p<0.05) in patients who first visited the public health care facility than patients who first visited a private health care provider. Conclusions: General practitioners are preferred first choice of health care provider for tuberculosis patients. Mean health care system delay is more than patient delay

PREVALENCE OF TYPE-2 DIABETES MELLITUS AND AS-SOCIATED RISK FACTORS IN AN URBAN SLUM OF PUNE CITY, INDIA

Aim and Objectives: To find the prevalence of known cases of diabetes in urban slum of Pune city and its association with risk factors. Material and Methods: A cross sectional study was conducted in field practice area of Urban Health Training Center in the age group of 20 years and above comprising of total 1779 subjects. Risk factors like age, waist circumference, and family history of diabetes and physical activities were assessed to find their association with diabetes. Results: Prevalence of type 2 Diabetes Mellitus found in present study was 4.6% with equal prevalence in both the sex. Higher prevalence of diabetes in males was found in the age group of >60 years while in females prevalence has occurred a decade earlier i.e. in 51-60 years. Abdominal obesity in females, family history of diabetes were found positively associated with diabetes while there was no significant association found between diabetes and physical activity. Conclusion: Awareness regarding risk factors in community is necessary for control of diabetes in known cases of diabetes and for early diagnosis in future cases

THE SYMPTOMS AND CO-MORBIDITIES OF COVID-19 PATIENTS AT HOME ISOLATION IN INDIA

Indian Government has issued the guidelines on home isolation for very mild/pre-symptomatic COVID-19 cases based on a proposal of the Directorate of Public Health and Preventive Medicine. This has originated when COVID-19 designated hospitals started to shift asymptomatic and stable patients to quarantine facilities to reserve beds for those in need of treatment. To determine the prevalence of symptoms and co-morbidities of COVID-19 positive patients at home isolation OPD. This cross-sectional study was conducted at a designated COVID-19 tertiary care hospital in Pune, India, which had included all COVID-19 positive patients enrolled for the home isolation care from the 15th July to 15th August 2020. There were total 639 adults out of which 362 were males and 277 females. The most common presenting symptom present in 49.4% cases was fever. Hypertension was the most prevalent comorbidity noticed in 10% of patients followed by Diabetes in 6.7%. The maximum time lag of positive COVID-19 test to registration for home isolation OPD of 8 days was observed in only 1 patient. The significant association was seen between symptom of fever with the adults (males) and in the age group of 31-50 years(p<0.05). Home isolation could be considered a classic model for COVID19 patients in resource constrained situation. Home isolation can substantially reduce health care expenses for the asymptomatic and mild symptomatic COVID-19 multitude

Blockchain’s Value Addition in Network Industry : A multi-case study in electricity and telecommunications industry

There could hardly be any industry that has still not explored blockchain. Believing in how the technology behind bitcoin could be changing money, business, and the world1, blockchain’s impact has been felt everywhere. Blockchain is considered a revolutionary technology in its ability to store information and enable transactions. Since the application of this technology varies with the context, the blockchain technology has taken different forms ranging from its public permissionless network that is open to all to its private permissioned network that is restricted to a few. Not indulging in the debates whether a particular blockchain is really a blockchain or not, this research instead explores blockchain’s features that the stakeholders of some of the most regulated industries find valuable. The main research question that this thesis answers is ‘Why do entities enable or restrict blockchain affordances?’ A general promise of blockchain has been its potential of operating as a trustless system making unnecessary the trust to be placed on centralised (trusted) third parties, intermediaries, brokers etc. This makes blockchain capable of eliminating intermediaries and the transaction costs associated with them. Since, this study focusses on the regulated industries namely electricity and telecommunication industry, a transaction cost analysis is carried out in identifying the stakeholders (the transacting parties and the intermediaries), the ‘play of the game’ i.e. institutional arrangement and the ‘rules of the game’ i.e. institutional environment in carrying out exchanges in the two contexts. However, after reviewing the status quo of the contexts, it can be deduced that the existing systems already reduce certain transaction costs incurred by certain stakeholders of these sectors. These systems are established through regulations for example, the regulatory directives that restrains the behavioural uncertainty of participants, the standardization of the information exchange that reduces the compliance costs of participants and the intermediaries that reduces the transaction costs of the market participants. Moreover, a lack of commercial cases of smart contracts, questions whether the technology could automate intermediary functions and further contribute to reduction in transaction costs. Acknowledging a lack of commercial blockchain usecases, this study takes another approach in understanding blockchain’s value addition by investigating its niche. The study operationalizes transaction cost framework to investigate the very first application of blockchain – the Bitcoin. Concluding blockchain’s uniqueness over other ICT is its consensus mechanism, the study establishes the trust factors that blockchain enables and the digital scarcity that is now possible through blockchain. The study finds that bitcoin does not disintermediate all the intermediaries but circumvents a very specific intermediary, moreover, bitcoin also addresses a very specific trust issue. Examining if these findings are also relevant for the electricity and telecommunication industry, the research carries out a multi-case study. The research investigates the expected/realized benefits of blockchain by the project developers in electricity and telecommunication industry through semi-structured interviews. The research also investigates if blockchain is being differently adopted in these sectors by understanding the blockchain design in these two contexts and analyses the reasons for the same. The main findings of the multi-case study are that the blockchain projects in the electricity and telecommunication industry does not address any existing distrust. With the existing ICT employed for exchanges in these two contexts, the study illuminates on an important aspect that decentralisation is not unique to blockchain and is possible through a non-blockchain distributed infrastructure. Given that even a non-blockchain distributed infrastructure does not aim to disintermediate but to decentralise power of a central entity, the research concludes that blockchain is not about disintermediation. The research finds that blockchain usecases in these two industries share a commonality and that they benefit from blockchain’s immutability feature. The study deduces that the aspect blockchain decentralises is the power of an entity influencing a data change; after the data is recorded on blockchain. Given that the majority of blockchain developments are a permissioned network, this study points out that to gain benefits from its immutability feature, blockchain requires decentralisation to avoid a threat of collusio

Clickbait Detection in YouTube Videos

YouTube videos often include captivating descriptions and intriguing thumbnails designed to increase the number of views, and thereby increase the revenue for the person who posted the video. This creates an incentive for people to post clickbait videos, in which the content might deviate significantly from the title, description, or thumbnail. In effect, users are tricked into clicking on clickbait videos. In this research, we consider the challenging problem of detecting clickbait YouTube videos. We experiment with logistic regression, random forests, and multilayer perceptrons, based on a variety of textual features. We obtain a maximum accuracy in excess of 94%

Tuberculosis awareness program and associated changes in knowledge levels of school students

Background: This study aimed to assess the effectiveness of tuberculosis awareness program amongst school students. Methods: This school-based interventional study was done on 135 secondary school students. They were randomly selected in field practice area of Urban Health Training Center (UHTC) of a private medical college in Pune city. Health awareness session on tuberculosis was conducted by using various visual and audiovisual aids by the medical college undergraduate students. A pre-test and post-proforma was filled before and after the session. Paired t-test was used to assess the effectiveness of awareness program. Results : There was a highly significant (P = 0) increase in the knowledge of school students after the tuberculosis awareness program by medical undergraduate students. The mean pre-test scores were 6.31 (52.58%), and the mean post-test scores were 10.20 (85%). This activity also helped medical undergraduate students to acquire skills related to communication, working in a team, preparation and presentation of various visual aids for health awareness program; they also gained knowledge of research methodology. Conclusions: Health education program by medical students helped significantly to improve the knowledge of school students regarding tuberculosis. Thus, medical college students can be involved to some extent for conducting health-related behavioral change communication (BCC) activities in schools during their Community Medicine morning posting. Collaboration of private medical colleges, schools, and district tuberculosis units (DTUs) can be ideally achieved under public private partnership (PPP) for health awareness programs

ASSESSMENT OF INSOMNIA AND PSYCHO-SOCIAL HEALTH STATUS OF INDIAN CITIZENS DURING COVID-19 PANDEMIC LOCKDOWN PERIOD

The Pandemic lockdown period in India had created changes in various health aspects of the general population. One of the common anticipated responses is Insomnia. A National level online survey using a non-probability snowball sampling technique was conducted and 1007 responses were received from people within the range of 18 to 70 years. This cross-sectional study attempted to assess the Psycho-social health status of the general population of India during the Pandemic Lockdown period and provides an overview of evidence regarding relevant information like availability status of essential requirements, distress levels when facing the shortage of those preventive medications that were being taken by participants, degree of worry on appearance of minor symptoms, changes in perception towards people belonging to other countries It also reports the fraction of participants who faced ostracism due to being infected or having minor symptoms or due to profession. Insomnia prevalence during the period was assessed by using ISI scores of participants. The questionnaire also included open-ended questions to record the Major challenges faced by people during lockdown( like Psychological, Behavioural, Physical, Social and Economic), their perception about safety measures that can protect them, and aspects of the current Pandemic management system that they believe must be improved

Transport of pollutants from nearby catchments to the Nagarjuna Sagar Dam

The understanding of the fate of the various pollutants and its mobility in the catchments of Nagarjun Sagar dam built on the Krishna river is of utmost important .As the Pedaguttu and Lambarpur catchments area has a proposed Uranium mining sites and Nagarjuna Sagar dam is the third largest man made dam which is the ultimate destination of all the rivulets in the Pedaguttu catchments. The concept of the distribution coefficient is invoked to understand the residence time of radionuclide on its nature. Expressions are derived to estimate the value of soil erosion constant using naturally occurring radionuclide. Based on 210Pb profile in the sediment core, the sedimentary load of 0.24 gm m−2y−1 was observed in the Pedaguttu and Lambarpur side of the Dam. The retention time and the transport coefficient of the pollutant were further obtained by using the appropriate modeling equation and was found 3776 and 2.7 × 10−5 respectively. The comparative exercise of the retention time and transport coefficient was done with the other studied catchments of the world for the further validation of the result