Vulnerabilities Faced by Women Widowed by Kedarnath Disaster: An Explorative Case Study

This paper is aimed at exploring the vulnerabilities of women widowed during the Uttarakhand floods of India in 2013. Generally, widows in the Northern States of India, are perceived as a second-class citizen and is usually associated with social neglect, isolation, restrictions and poverty. The study consisted of 20 women who lost their husband in the floods. The results indicate that they are facing financial difficulties and profound helplessness. Their economic concerns primarily revolved around providing primary education and decent nutrition for their children. Governmental compensation and pension were reported to be insufficient to cover daily needs. Keywords: Widowhood; Vulnerability; Disaster; Floods eISSN: 2398-4287© 2020. The Authors. Published for AMER ABRA cE-Bsby e-International Publishing House, Ltd., UK. This is an open access article under the CC BYNC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer–review under responsibility of AMER (Association of Malaysian Environment-Behaviour Researchers), ABRA (Association of Behavioural Researchers on Asians) and cE-Bs (Centre for Environment-Behaviour Studies), Faculty of Architecture, Planning & Surveying, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia. DOI: https://doi.org/10.21834/ebpj.v5iSI3.253

Office hysteroscopy prior to ART cycle-analysis and outcome at a private IVF clinic setup in Surat, Gujarat, India

Background: Hysteroscopy is a gold standard test for assessing the uterine cavity. The presence of uterine pathology may negatively affect the chance of implantation .This study investigated the use of routine office hysteroscopy and correction of any intrauterine pathologies prior to starting IVF cycle on treatment outcome in women seeking IVF treatment for primary infertility and recurrent implantation failure.Methods: This was a retrospective study of 100 women who attended our infertility clinic from July 2016 to December 2016 and who were willing for office hysteroscopy. The main outcomes measured were clinical pregnancy rates achieved in the index IVF cycle, multiple pregnancy rate, ectopic pregnancy rate, miscarriage rate and failure rate.Results: Of the 100 patients who participated in the study, 75 patients conceived, 25 patients failed to conceive. 80.64% patients with normal findings on diagnostic hysteroscopy conceived after the procedure, 58.33% patients conceived after polypectomy, 68.42% conceived after septal resection, 71.42% conceived after adhesiolysis, 50% conceived after lateral metroplasty and 73.07% of recurrent implantation failure conceived after local endometrial injury was done on hysteroscopy.Conclusions: Hysteroscopy in infertile women prior to their IVF cycle when performed atleast 3 months in advance could improve treatment outcome

Community-Specific BMI Cutoff Points for South Indian Females

Objective. To analyze multiparameters related to total body composition, with specific emphasis on obesity in South Indian females, in order to derive community-specific BMI cutoff points. Patients and Methods. A total number of 87 females (of age 37.33 ± 13.12 years) from South Indian Chennai urban population participated in this clinical study. Body composition analysis and anthropometric measurements were acquired after conducting careful clinical examination. Results. BMI demonstrated high significance when normal group (21.02 ± 1.47 kg/m2) was compared with obese group (29.31 ± 3.95 kg/m2), P < 0.0001. BFM displayed high significance when normal group (14.92 ± 4.28 kg) was compared with obese group (29.94 ± 8.1 kg), P < 0.0001. Conclusion. Community-specific BMI cutoffs are necessary to assess obesity in different ethnic groups, and relying on WHO-based universal BMI cutoff points would be a wrong strategy

Non-prescription sale of antibiotics in pharmacies across Puducherry, India

Background: Despite being illegal, non-prescription sales of antibiotics in India continue to be a major contributor to antibiotic abuse, which fosters antibiotic resistance.Methods: Two trained actors simulated symptoms of acute gastroenteritis (AGE) and upper respiratory tract infections (URTI) in 60 pharmacies each randomly selected in the Union Territory of Pondicherry, India. The ease of obtaining antibiotics, any additional enquiries made by the pharmacies, and any additional advise given were noted.Results: Only 33/120 pharmacies (27.5%) declined to dispense antibiotics without prescription; all 33 were attached to a hospital or nursing home. The most frequently dispensed antibiotics for AGE and URTI were ciprofloxacin (41.4%) and coamoxiclav (41.3%) respectively. Out of the 87 pharmacies which dispensed antibiotics without prescription, the presence of additional symptoms and previous drug allergy were enquired by 20 (22.9%) and 9 (10.3%) pharmacies respectively. While over half of the pharmacies gave instructions regarding dose, duration and frequency of antibiotic consumption, none of the pharmacies provided information regarding adverse reaction profile of antibiotics. Non-pharmacological measures for symptomatic improvement were advised by 24/120 pharmacies (20%).Conclusions: Non-prescription sales of antibiotics are unacceptably high in Pondicherry. Stricter implementation of the law and public awareness of the perils of inappropriate antibiotic usage are the need of the hour

A comparative study between agonist and antagonist protocol for ovarian stimulation in art cycles at a rural set up in South Gujarat

Background: Modern infertility practice provides us with several protocols for controlled ovarian hyperstimulation for the ART (Assisted Reproductive Techniques) cycles. The review summarises the clinical characteristics of the protocols using Gonadotrophin Releasing Hormone (GnRH) agonists and antagonists emphasising on the major clinical and laboratory outcomes with each protocol.Methods: A total of 322 cases undergoing ovarian stimulation with agonist and antagonist protocols in ART cycles at a rural set up at Killa Pardi in the year 2014 were studied and their laboratory and clinical outcomes were evaluated.Results: Antagonist group had the maximum number of oocytes retrieved and the mature M2 oocytes, maximum No. of follicles &gt;16 mm on day of HCG, maximum No. of positive pregnancy rates. Agonist group had also a good pregnancy rate with maximum Grade I embryos.Conclusions: Taking all data together, it may be concluded that antagonists and minimal ovarian stimulation with antagonist protocols offer a new treatment regimen in ovarian stimulation that is short, safe, cost effective, well tolerated, optimizing convenience for the patient

A comparative study of pregnancy outcome of sequential versus day 3 versus only blastocyst (day 6) transfer at a single IVF center over one year

Background: The recent introduction of sequential media has refocused attention upon the role of human blastocyst in IVF.  For optimisation of extended cycles, one needs to give importance to all the aspects of treatment cycle like the stimulation regimens, medium composition, endometrial quality and uterine receptivity. This study was done to know the pregnancy outcomes of Day 3 transfer vs Day3/Day 6 transfer vs only Day 6 transfer.Methods: It was a retrospective study in which 342 patients undergoing ICSI were included. 199 women underwent Day 3/Day 6 sequential transfers, 112 underwent only Day 3 transfer and only 30 women were given only Blastocyst i.e. day 6 transfer. Pregnancy outcomes of all the three groups were studied.Results: Sequential transfer was found to give maximum pregnancy rate and highest implantation rate. But it was also associated with highest number of multiple pregnancies.Conclusions: Sequential transfer is a very good efficacious approach in ART cycles if extended media are available as it gave maximum pregnancy rate and implantation rate. However it is associated with multiple pregnancies. Thus the ultimate goal is to have a single blastocyst transfer with better outcomes and lower multiple pregnancy rates

Assessment of Implementation of Integrated Management of Neonatal and Childhood Illness in India

At the current rate of decline in infant mortality, India is unlikely to achieve the Millennium Development Goal on child survival. Integrated Management of Neonatal and Childhood Illness (IMNCI), adapted from the global Integrated Management of Childhood Illness to enhance the focus on newborns and on community health workers, is the central strategy within the National Reproductive and Child Health Programme to address high infant mortality. This paper assessed the progress of IMNCI in India, identified the programme bottlenecks, and also assessed the effect on coverage of key newborn and childcare practices. Programme data were analyzed to ascertain the implementation status; rapid programme assessment was conducted for identifying the programme bottlenecks; and results of analysis of two rounds of district-level household surveys were used for comparing the change in the coverage of child-health interventions in IMNCI and control districts. More than 200,000 community health workers and first-level healthcare providers were trained during 2005-2009 at a variable pace across 223 districts. Of the reported births (n=1,102,573), 65.5% were visited by a trained worker within 24 hours, and 63.1% were visited three times within 10 days. Poor supervision and inadequate essential supplies affected the performance of trained workers. During 2004-2008, 12 early-implementing districts had covered most key newborn and child practice indicators compared to the control districts; however, the difference was significant only for care-seeking for acute respiratory infection (net difference: 17.8%; 95% confidence interval 2.3-33.2, p<0.026). Based on the early experience of IMNCI implementation in different states of India, measures need to be taken to improve supportive supervision, availability of essential supplies, and monitoring of the programme if the strategy has to translate into improved child survival in India

A REALISTIC AND VALUABLE VARIETY SELECTION POLICY FOR HUGE RANGE DE-DUPLICATION

The data provided using the customer to tune the deduplication process is generally symbolized having a couple of by hands labeled pairs. In large datasets, producing this type of labeled set may well be a daunting task because it requires a specialist to choose and label plenty of informative pairs. Within the first stage, we advise a procedure for produce balanced subsets of candidate pairs for labeling. Within the second stage, an active selection is incrementally invoked to get rid of the redundant pairs within the subsets produced within the first stage to be able to provide an even smaller sized plus much more informative training set. This training set is effectively used both to understand in which the most ambiguous pairs lie also to configure the classification approaches. Our evaluation makes sure that TSSS cuts lower around the labeling effort substantially while achieving a hostile or superior matching quality in comparison with condition-of-the-art deduplication methods in large datasets. The information deduplication task has attracted lots of attention inside the research community to be able to provide efficient and effective solutions

SYNTHESIS OF PRODRUGS OF MEFENAMIC ACID AND THEIR IN VIVO EVALUATION

Objective: The purpose of the study was to synthesize prodrugs of mefenamic acid, to be used as Anti inflammatory drug with fewer adverse effects. Methods: The drug was covalently bonded to PEG 1500 (polyethylene glycol) and PEG 6000 as such and with a linker glycine. The prodrugs were characterized by FT-I.R and N.M.R. For the drug release studies, all the prodrugs were subjected to pH 1.2 and pH 7.2. For the anti inflammatory activity, Carrageenan induced rat paw edema method was followed and for Ulcer protecting activity, Pylorus ligation method was used, the prodrugs were administered to male Sprague-Dawley rats. Results: The results suggested that the prodrugs of mefenamic acid, the drug release was higher at pH 7.2 than at pH 1.2. The result obtained for anti inflammatory activity was comparable to the standard drug of mefenamic acid. For ulcers, the prodrugs were found to possess Ulcer curing property higher than the standard drug. Conclusion: The prodrugs thus synthesized possess anti inflammatory activity as well as good ulcer protecting activity, can be used instead of standard drug

Machine Learning Approach to Improve Prediction Accuracy of Alzheimer’s Disease

Alzheimer’s is a chronic neurodegenerative disease developed due to multiple cognitive deficits that progressively leads to at least one of the following: apraxia, aphasia, agnosia or a disturbance in executive functioning. As of 2012, more than 5.1 million Americans are affected by Alzheimer’s. Alzheimer’s disease accounts for 60 to 80 percent of dementia cases. Numerous pharmaceutical market leaders attempt on developing a cure for the disease. Significant progress has been made on this field. However, studies have shown that manual assessment of the disease using various parameters including (but not restricted to) Neuroimaging (MRI, PET, etc.), Neuropsychological tests (MMSE, FAQ, GDS, NPI, etc.) and Neurogenetics (TOMM40 gene assessment) yield an accuracy of 96% only. Our study involved integrating all three results and allowing the system to predict whether a patient is suffering from Alzheimer's