KNOWLEDGE ATTITUDE AND PRACTICES ON MENSTRUAL HEALTH AMONG YOUNG WOMEN IN BIHAR- A CROSS-SECTIONAL STUDY.

Background: India has several health issues that can be avoided by raising awareness and following fundamental rules. Menstrual hygiene is one of those subjects that is rarely discussed but is essential to a woman's life. Women have been discouraged from getting help from professionals due to misconceptions about this. The aim of this study is to spread awareness of menstrual health and practice among young women in Bihar. Methods: This study was conducted at Jawaharlal Nehru Medical College and Hospital located in Bhagalpur, Bihar with 25 participants per week. Data collection was carried out from September 2022 to February 2023 with a structured questionnaire after obtaining consent.  Results: Most women (59%) understood little about menstruation. Moreover, a quarter of those surveyed used disposable pads. Most Bihari women (73%) who did not use sanitary pads claimed to have used cotton (9%), old disposable clothes (60%), reusable clothing (26%), or toilet tissue paper (4%). Sixty-one percent of the women took special baths, and thirty-seven percent observed sociocultural taboos during their periods. Higher menstrual knowledge was linked to more disposable sanitary napkins being used, according to the bivariate analysis (low knowledge: 76 individuals, high knowledge: 156 individuals; p=0.01). Conclusion: The research concluded that the study subjects had no awareness of menstruation hygiene. They had subpar menstrual hygiene habits and attitudes. Participants' lack of preparation for menarche and their strong opinions that menstruation is socially taboo can be inferred from their different constraints because of these strong social and cultural norms to eliminate the stigma associated with menstruation, group talks, media efforts, and sex education in schools are necessary. Recommendation: Frequent sessions should be conducted by healthcare workers to enhance the knowledge of young women, and to increase their positive attitudes and practices regarding menstrual hygiene

PointResNet: Residual Network for 3D Point Cloud Segmentation and Classification

Point cloud segmentation and classification are some of the primary tasks in 3D computer vision with applications ranging from augmented reality to robotics. However, processing point clouds using deep learning-based algorithms is quite challenging due to the irregular point formats. Voxelization or 3D grid-based representation are different ways of applying deep neural networks to this problem. In this paper, we propose PointResNet, a residual block-based approach. Our model directly processes the 3D points, using a deep neural network for the segmentation and classification tasks. The main components of the architecture are: 1) residual blocks and 2) multi-layered perceptron (MLP). We show that it preserves profound features and structural information, which are useful for segmentation and classification tasks. The experimental evaluations demonstrate that the proposed model produces the best results for segmentation and comparable results for classification in comparison to the conventional baselines.Comment: Paper Under Review at IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP) 202

Study of association of socio-demographic characteristics with the knowledge about sex determination and preconception and prenatal diagnostic technique act among pregnant women

Background: Preconception and prenatal diagnostic technique Act was amended in year 2003 which provides for prohibition of sex selection before and after conception and for regulation of prenatal diagnostic technique.Methods: A cross sectional study was carried out in antenatal ward of GSVM Medical College Kanpur during the period of January to December 2019. A total of 2500 pregnant women were included and predesigned and pretested questionnaire was used to get information regarding socio-demographic details of pregnant women. They were asked regarding the knowledge and attitude towards the PC-PNDT Act. Data were collected and analyzed using Microsoft excel and SPSS-12. Results: In the present study, out of 2500 women, 2125 (85%) knew about sex determination while 125 (5%) knew about PNDT Act. There was significant association of occupation, education and annual income with knowledge. Majority of women know about PC-PNDT act from health staff and ultrasonography was the main technique they know to detect sex determination. Conclusions: The falling ratio of girl child is a matter of grave concern. Effective implementation of the PNDT Act in addition to spreading awareness about this act among people is the need of the hour. Educating the community will prevent the decline in sex ratio and female feticide through PC-PNDT Act

Status and conservation of avian fauna of Sultanpur National Park Gurgaon, Haryana (India)

The present study was conducted in Sultanpur National Park Gurgaon, Haryana (India) from February, 2011 to January, 2012 to analyze the avian diversity along with its status and abundance. During the study period, a total of 113 species of birds belonging to 14 orders, 35 families and 80 genera were identified. Maximum 41 species belonging to 12 families of order Passeriformes represented 36.28% of the total identified avian fauna while Podicipediformes and Strigiformes were the least represented avian orders (0.88%) with one species each,namely, Little Grebe, Tachybaptus ruficollis and Spotted Owlet, Athene brama respectively. Out of total reported 113 species, 64 were ‘resident’ species and 49 were ‘migrant’ species. Most of the migratory species were winter visitors except Red throated flycatcher, Ficedula parva; Orange Headed Thrush, Zoothera citrine and Eurasian Golden Oriole, Oriolus oriolus which were summer visitors. In all, 42 species were ‘common’, 33 species were ‘uncommon’ and 38 species were ‘occasional’ bird species. Based on sighting, White Breasted Kingfisher, Halcyonsmyrnensis; White Breasted Water Hen, Amaurornis phoenicurus; Common Moorhen, Gallinule chloropus; Black Wing Stilt, Himantopus himantopus; Red Wattled lapwing, Vanellus indicus; Cattle Egret, Bubulcus ibis and Indian Pond Heron, Ardeola grayii were common wetland bird species of Sultanpur National Park while Pied king fisher, Ceryle rudis and Coppersmith Barbet, Megalaima haemacephala were ‘rarely sighted’ bird species. During the study period, 7 ‘globally threatened’ species, namely, Painted Stork, Mycteria leucocephala; Black neck Stork, Ephippiorhynchus asiaticus; Black headed Ibis, Threskiornis melanocephalus; Darter, Anhinga melanogaster; Pacific Reef Egret, Egretta sacra; Sarus Crane, Grus antigone alongwith Hogson bushchat, Saxicola insignis were also recorded from the study area

A study to assess the effectiveness of clinical teaching on the level of knowledge regarding nursing care bundle to prevent ventilator associated pneumonia among ICU nursing officers at AIIMS Bhopal

Background: Healthcare is a professional area bound to the ethical foundation of “do no harm.”, But in the current scenario, a rush to promote the curative scenario has led to the total downplay of the preventive aspect of care. The aim of this study was to assess the knowledge regarding nursing care bundle for the prevention of VAP among nursing officers before and after clinical teaching and to evaluate the effectiveness of clinical teaching. Methods: This pretest-post-test study was conducted on nursing officers working in the ICU of the All-India Institute of Medical Sciences, Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh. 100 nursing officers were enrolled in the study via convenience sampling technique. The self-structured tool was validated by 10 experts with a mean CVI value of 0.94. The reliability of the self-structured knowledge questionnaire was determined by the test-retest method and found to be 0.87. The collected data was analysed for frequency, mean, standard deviation, t-test, and association. Results: Findings showed that the mean knowledge score was 18.46±3.543 before intervention. After the intervention of video-assisted clinical teaching, a post-test was conducted, and the mean post-test knowledge scores was 25.07±2.801 at the p value <0.01. Knowledge of subjects about nursing care bundle for prevention of VAP was found to have a significant association with only educational qualification. Conclusions: This study's findings concluded that educational interventions are necessary for the enhancement of knowledge and better compliance of nursing officers with guidelines regarding the bundle of care for the prevention of ventilator-associated pneumonia

Clinico biochemical profile of birth asphyxia in neonates of western Odisha

Background: Perinatal asphyxia contributes to almost 29% of neonatal deaths in developing countries as most of the deliveries occur inrural areas and are unattended. The outcome of most of the deliveries is not encouraging in spite of standard guidelines. Objectives: To studythe different spectrum of clinical presentation of birth asphyxia and its biochemical derangements. Materials and Methods: This was aprospective, hospital-based study conducted from September 2005 to March 2008 comprising of 58 term neonates admitted to neonatalintensive care unit with definite history suggestive of perinatal hypoxic insult. Compilation of history, clinical features, and relevantinvestigations (random blood sugar, serum creatinine, blood urea and serum electrolytes) were done, and the results were analyzed byusing Medcalc software version 12. Results: Vaginal delivery was more common across all the stages. Abnormal neonatal reflex was acommon feature in all babies except hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy (HIE) I. Convulsion, mostly multifocal seizures was present in allHIE II babies where as only 22.2% babies had seizure in HIE III. Congestive heart failure (55.17%) and Oliguria was present in HIE III(77.8%) and 22 cases (37.9%) developed acute kidney injury. Hypoglycemia was observed with increasing severity of asphyxia (HIE III26.67 ± 2.78). Serum urea, creatinine and potassium increased significantly in HIE III whereas calcium and sodium were decreased.Conclusion: The combination of clinical and supportive laboratory parameters can be used for monitoring of patients to guide earlyintervention to decreases morbidity and mortality

Oral Bacteriophages

Bacteriophage or phage therapy involves using phages or their products as bio-agents for the treatment or prophylaxis of bacterial infections or diseases. Bacteriophages have the ability to regulate the oral microflora by lysing sensitive bacterial cells and releasing bacterial components with pro-inflammatory activity. Bacteriophages carry specific polysaccharide depolymerases that aid viral penetration and can disrupt the pathogenic process associated with biofilm and exopolysaccharide in the oral cavity. Oral diseases are mainly caused by biofilm forming microorganisms and phages are now being used for biocontrol of oral biofilms. Phages for Actinomyces species, Aggregatibacter actinomycetemcomitans, Enterococcus faecalis, Fusobacterium nucleatum, Lactobacillus species, Neisseria species, Streptococcus species, and Veillonella species have been isolated and characterized. Bacteriophages could be considered as potential therapeutic tools for the elimination of caries, periodontitis, and other diseases of the oral cavity

PREVALENCE OF ORAL CANDIDIASIS AMONG CANCER PATIENTS ATTENDING A TERTIARY CARE HOSPITAL IN RANCHI, EAST INDIA: A RETROSPECTIVE STUDY.

Background: Within the past two decades, Candida species have emerged as major human pathogens and are currently the fourth most common cause of nosocomial infection. Propose of this study was to determine the occurrence of oral Candidiasis among cancer patients at Rajendra Institute of Medical Sciences, Ranchi. Materials and Methods: Sixty cancer patients were examined for oral candidiasis. For all patients, the clinical diagnosis had to be confirmed microbiologically by the presence of yeasts and/or hyphae or pseudohyphae on potassium hydroxide– treated smears of oral swabs. Oral samples were obtained and cultured on Sabouraud's dextrose agar and CHROMagar. Results: 25 out of the 60 patients (41.7%) were males and 35 (58.3%) were females ranging in age from 15 to 79 years. Gastrointestinal cancer and Breast cancer were the most frequent cancer in the studied group, accounting for 65 % and 18.4 % respectively. The mean weight of the patients was 52.67 Kg (range, 38– 80 Kg). Similarly, the mean of hospital stay was 3.58 days (range; 1-9 days). From these patients, 19 Candida spp were isolated; C. albicans alone outnumbered other species and accounted for 73.68% of episodes of trash. For C. albicans isolates, the MIC values range from 1 to 9 µ g / ml µg / ml for polyenes and from 0.03 to 16 µ g / ml for the azole antifungals. All the Candida albicans had closely related MFCs values. Conclusion: In conclusion, the finding of our study strongly suggests that oral candidiasis is a frequent complication among cancer patients, being C. albicans as the main etiological agent

A RETROSPECTIVE STUDY ON MULTI DRUG RESISTANT TUBERCULOSIS IN A TERTIARY CARE HOSPITAL: AN ALARMING THREAT OF CONCERN.

Introduction: MDR-TB is becoming a significant global health concern in this era. Globally, the incidence of MDR-TB is 3.4% in new cases and 18% in previously treated cases. MDR-TB mostly arises due to inadequate treatment, poor compliance to drugs, and/or direct contact with an MDR-TB patient and hence is essentially a man-made phenomenon. The prevalence of MDR-TB in any area is mirrored by the functional state and efficiency of tuberculosis control programs running in the country. Material and Method:  A total of 549 cases were recruited during the period from 2017 to 2019 and the data were analysed retrospectively. Both pulmonary and extra-pulmonary samples were collected with proper aseptic measures. Direct microscopy by Ziehl Neelsen (ZN) staining was done. Further liquid culture and first-line drug susceptibility testing were performed in MGIT 960. Result: Out of 549 enrolled cases, 312 Mycobacterium tuberculosis cases were confirmed. The prevalence of mono or multi-drug resistance of MTB patients to 1st line drugs during 2017, 2018, and 2019 were 51.7%, 52.1%, and 49.1% respectively. The present study showed a prevalence of MDR-TB in new cases and of previously treated TB cases on an average of 2.7% and 11.2% which is slightly lower than the national level data of 3.4% and 18% respectively. Conclusion: India is showing an increased prevalence of MDR-TB which leads to the greatest obstacle to the End TB strategy adopted by WHO and the government of India. There is an urgent need for continuous surveillance of MDR-TB