ABSTRACT
Background: Diarrhoea is the second leading cause of death in children under five years of age, and is responsible for killing around 5,25,000 children every year. A major determinant of child health is the health and knowledge of the mother. So the knowledge, attitude and health practices of the mothers directly reflect on the health and vitality of the child.Methods: A community based cross sectional type of study was conducted among mothers who had children of 0-5 years of age using pre designed, pretested structured questionnaire. Study area was 5 urban slum pockets in Tertiary care hospital of Sangareddy, Telangana. 255 mothers were selected for the study using random sampling technique.Results: Out of the total 255 study populations most of the mothers were literate, living in nuclear families belonging to Hindu religion. About half of the mothers had knowledge regarding diarrhoea and 71.4% of the mothers have given hospital treatment for it. When asked about 78.4% of mothers told that they follow preventive health practices. Majority of mothers had a good knowledge regarding steps to be taken by health care facility during diarrheal attack.Conclusions: On the basis of the present study, there was a significant association of knowledge regarding diarrhoea with maternal literacy and socio economic status. This study brought out the health seeking behaviour of mothers of under five children.
ABSTRACT
Background: Obesity is a newly emerging, global pandemic problem involving developed as well as developing countries. Even in countries like India, which are typically known for high prevalence of under nutrition, significant proportions of overweight and obese now coexist with the undernourished. Overweight and Obesity are the 5th leading risk of global deaths. Rapidly changing diets and lifestyles are increasing the global obesity epidemic. According to recent estimates, there are more than one billion overweight people worldwide, and some 300 million of these are estimated to be obese. Obesity is one of the important risk factors for non communicable disease like CAD, stroke, cancer, depression etc, going to increase burden of non communicable diseases in terms of morbidity and mortality. Aims and objectives were to determine the prevalence of overweight and obesity among women of >20 years and to identify various factors associated with overweight and obesity. Methods: A community based cross sectional study was conducted and 446 women of 20-60 years age were included in the study. A Predesigned questionnaire was used for the study. Anthropometric measurements such as weight, height, waist circumference were measured using standard techniques. Results: In the present study, prevalence of overweight in the study population was 28.2% and obesity 13.6%. Overweight & Obesity were significantly associated with family history, comorbid conditions etc. Conclusions: Prevalence of overweight & obesity is increasing in developing countries like India due to changing life styles, diet patterns and sedentary life style. This observation emphasizes large scale awareness campaign about overweight and obesity