Child nutrition, child health, and school enrollment : a longitudinal analysis

Better health and nutrition are thought to improve children's performance in school, and therefore their productivity after school. Most literature ignores the fact that child health and schooling reflect behavioral choices, so the estimated impact of health and nutrition on a child's schooling reflects biases in the studies. Using an explicit dynamic model for preferred estimates, the authors use longitudinal data to investigate how children's health and nutrition affect school enrollment in rural Pakistan. They use price shocks when children were of preschool age to control for behavior determining the measure of children's health and nutrition stock. The authors find that children's health and nutrition is three times more important for enrollment than is suggested by"naive estimates"that assume that children's health and nutrition is predetermined rather that determined by household choices. Not only does improved nutrition increase enrollments, it does so more for girls, thus closing a portion of the gender gap. These results strongly reinforce the importance of using estimation methods that are consistent with the economic theory of households to explore the impact of some choice variables on others, using socioeconomic behavioral data. Private behaviors and public policies that affect the health and nutrition of children have much greater effect on school enrollment and on eventual productivity than suggested by early literature methods.Teaching and Learning,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Primary Education,Early Child and Children's Health,Public Health Promotion,Science Education,Scientific Research&Science Parks,Economic Theory&Research,Primary Education,Health Monitoring&Evaluation

Prevelance, risk factors and adverse perinatal outcomes of bacterial vaginosis in pregnancy

Background: Bacterial Vaginosis (BV) is the most common lower genital tract syndrome in women of age group 16 to 25years.BV is a disorder of the vaginal microbial ecosystem characterized by a shift in the vaginal flora, from the normally predominant Lactobacillus species to one dominated by a mixed flora. The prevalence of BV can be around 15-30% and upto 50% in pregnancy. This study aims to study the prevalence of BV and their adverse outcomes on pregnancy.Methods: It is a Cross Sectional Study at Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, at a tertiary care hospital, for a period of one and half year from November 2016-April 2018.Pregnant women attending antenatal clinic were enrolled after obtaining an informed consent and vaginal swab examination done. The sample size was 200.Results: The prevalence of BV in pregnant females was 18%. The major risk factors for BV in pregnancy were young age, low socioeconomic status and recent sexual activity. All patients who took treatment for BV had good outcome. Amsel criteria had low sensitivity but very high specificity(95%).Individually vaginal PH had a very high sensitivity(91.6%) when compared to the gold standard Gram stain.Conclusions: Routine screening is recommended for all pregnant women with risk factors and with symptoms. Early diagnosis and treatment in pregnant women who are asymptomatic and with no risk factors can prevent adverse outcome

Genetic diversity studies among AAB group Indian banana cultivars using ISSR markers

Banana and plantains are generally classified based on morphological characteristics namely AA, AAA, AB, AAB and ABB. Further, there are four sub-groups in AAB genomic group. Presently we analyzed diversity using ISSR markers in 18 cultivars of AAB genomic group along with two each of AA types and BB wild accessions for comparison. The results have shown that AAB cultivars form a separate group. Dendrogram analysis showed that the subgroups ‘Plantain’ ‘Silk’ and ‘Mysore’ were placed in between AA and BB type. Whereas ten cultivars of ‘Pome’ sub group of the cultivars were unique and was placed in a separate cluster. In this study using ISSR markers, we are able to identify the subgroups clearly and their genetic relationships within the AAB group. The cultivars Rasthali and Nendran were clearly separated. The Pome sub-group cultivars found to be in a group which may be based on their geographical origin

Quality of care and health status in Ukraine

BACKGROUND: We conducted a national level assessment of the quality of clinical care practice in the Ukrainian healthcare system for two important causes of death and chronic disease conditions. We tested two hypotheses: a) quality of care is predicted by physician and facility characteristics and b) health status is predicted by quality of care. METHODS: During 2009–2010 in Ukraine, we collected nationally-representative data from clinical facilities, physicians, Clinical Performance and Value (CPV) vignettes, patient surveys from the facilities, and from the general population. Each physician completed a written CPV vignette—a simulated case scenario of a typical patient visit—for each of two clinical cases, congestive heart failure (CHF) and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). CPV vignette scores, calculated as a percentage of all care criteria completed by the physician, were used as the measure of clinical quality of care. Self-reported health measures were collected from exit and household survey respondents. Regression models were developed to test the two study hypotheses. RESULTS: 136 hospitals and 125 polyclinics were surveyed; 1,044 physicians were interviewed and completed CPV vignettes. On average physicians scored 47.4% on the vignettes. Younger, female physicians provide a higher quality of care—as well as those that have had recent continuing medical education (CME) in chronic disease or health behaviors. Higher quality was associated with better health outcomes. CONCLUSIONS: As low- and middle-income countries around the world are challenged by non-communicable diseases, higher quality of care provided to these populations may result in better outcomes, such as improved health status and life expectancy, and overcome regional shortfalls. Policy efforts that serially evaluate quality may improve chronic disease care.Keywords: Ukraine, Health policy, Health care delivery, Eastern Europe, Non-communicable diseases, Quality of car

HIV infection in rural households, Rakai district, Uganda

The Rakai Project conducted a population-based cohort study in rural Rakai District, Uganda, a region with high rates of HIV prevalence. The cohort population described here was followed between 1990 and 1992 and consisted of all residents aged 15 years or more living in 1945 households in 31 community clusters. A detailed census was conducted at baseline in every study household. Census data were updated annually, and all inter-survey deaths, births, and migrations were recorded. Immediately following each annual census, all consenting adults were administered a socio-demographic, behavioural and health survey, and provided a blood sample for HIV testing. HIV prevalence in the study population was high, with 19.1 per cent of adults aged 15 or more years being HIV-positive. By household, the burden of infection was even more pronounced: 31.3 per cent of households had at least one HIV-infected resident adult. Twenty seven per cent of heads of households were also HIV-positive. Overall, 3.6 per cent of study households experienced the death of an HIV-positive adult per year, and another two per cent lost an HIV-negative adult. HIV-related adult mortality had substantially more effect on subsequent household dependency ratio and on material possessions than the death of an HIV-uninfected adult, in part because the former deaths were concentrated in adults aged 15-49, the most economically active age group in this rural population. Just under 15 per cent of children aged 14 years or less had lost one or both parents, and approximately half of these parental losses are estimated to be associated with HIV infection. Nineteen per cent of study households reported at least one resident child who had lost one or both parents. Although there is evidence that loss of a parent is associated with lower school attendance, orphans overall continue to be absorbed by community households which are headed by adults. HIV infection is very prevalent among adults in Rakai and the associated mortality imposes a substantial social and economic burden on households in the district

Challenges and opportunities in mixed method data collection on mental health issues of health care workers during COVID-19 pandemic in India

Background: The present paper describes the key challenges and opportunities of mixed method telephonic data collection for mental health research using field notes and the experiences of the investigators in a multicenter study in ten sites of India. The study was conducted in public and private hospitals to understand the mental health status, social stigma and coping strategies of different healthcare personnel during the COVID-19 pandemic in India.Methods: Qualitative and quantitative interviews were conducted telephonically. The experiences of data collection were noted as a field notes/diary by the data collectors and principal investigators.Results: The interviewers reported challenges such as network issues, lack of transfer of visual cues and sensitive content of data. Although the telephonic interviews present various challenges in mixed method data collection, it can be used as an alternative to face-to-face data collection using available technology.Conclusions: It is important that the investigators are well trained keeping these challenges in mind so that their capacity is built to deal with these challenges and good quality data is obtained

Human protein reference database—2006 update

Human Protein Reference Database (HPRD) () was developed to serve as a comprehensive collection of protein features, post-translational modifications (PTMs) and protein–protein interactions. Since the original report, this database has increased to >20 000 proteins entries and has become the largest database for literature-derived protein–protein interactions (>30 000) and PTMs (>8000) for human proteins. We have also introduced several new features in HPRD including: (i) protein isoforms, (ii) enhanced search options, (iii) linking of pathway annotations and (iv) integration of a novel browser, GenProt Viewer (), developed by us that allows integration of genomic and proteomic information. With the continued support and active participation by the biomedical community, we expect HPRD to become a unique source of curated information for the human proteome and spur biomedical discoveries based on integration of genomic, transcriptomic and proteomic data

Effects of antiplatelet therapy on stroke risk by brain imaging features of intracerebral haemorrhage and cerebral small vessel diseases: subgroup analyses of the RESTART randomised, open-label trial

Background Findings from the RESTART trial suggest that starting antiplatelet therapy might reduce the risk of recurrent symptomatic intracerebral haemorrhage compared with avoiding antiplatelet therapy. Brain imaging features of intracerebral haemorrhage and cerebral small vessel diseases (such as cerebral microbleeds) are associated with greater risks of recurrent intracerebral haemorrhage. We did subgroup analyses of the RESTART trial to explore whether these brain imaging features modify the effects of antiplatelet therapy

Factors associated with stigma and manifestations experienced by Indian health care workers involved in COVID-19 management in India: A qualitative study

Healthcare personnel who deal with COVID-19 experience stigma. There is a lack of national-level representative qualitative data to study COVID-19-related stigma among healthcare workers in India. The present study explores factors associated with stigma and manifestations experienced by Indian healthcare workers involved in COVID-19 management. We conducted in-depth interviews across 10 centres in India, which were analysed using NVivo software version 12. Thematic and sentiment analysis was performed to gain deep insights into the complex phenomenon by categorising the qualitative data into meaningful and related categories. Healthcare workers (HCW) usually addressed the stigma they encountered when doing their COVID duties under the superordinate theme of stigma. Among them, 77.42% said they had been stigmatised in some way. Analyses revealed seven interrelated themes surrounding stigma among healthcare workers. It can be seen that the majority of the stigma and coping sentiments fall into the mixed category, followed by the negative sentiment category. This study contributes to our understanding of stigma and discrimination in low- and middle-income settings. Our data show that the emergence of fear of the virus has quickly turned into a stigma against healthcare workers