ABSTRACT
Background: Dengue, a mosquito borne, arboviral disease has become a major cause of health concern in the recent times throughout the world. In India, we have been witnessing annual outbreaks for the past few years and lack of knowledge about prevention and treatment of dengue among majority of the population leads to increased mortality. In spite of this fact, very few studies have been done to know about the knowledge of people regarding dengue fever and whether proper preventive measures are being practiced by the community to limit its spread. The objective of the study is to assess the knowledge, attitude and practices (KAP) regarding dengue in factory workers in Jammu.Methods: An observational study was conducted in a factory of Jammu to assess knowledge, attitude and practices of factory workers about dengue.Results: Majority of workers had knowledge about dengue (92.56%), source (81.81%), nature of disease, symptoms, but complications were not known. Majority of the workers had no idea that laboratory test for dengue is not available in every laboratory.63.63% of the workers knew that papaya is useful in dengue. 74.38% of the workers knew that low platelet count is found in dengue. There were 82.64% of the workers told that they think dengue is curable and preventable. There were 54.54% of the workers told that dengue can be prevented by avoiding stagnation of water. 57.85% of the workers told that they are aware about the sprays used by govt. to kill mosquito.Conclusions: There is a need to bring awareness about dengue, prevention and treatment as it is a prevalent disease now.
ABSTRACT
Background: Prescribing drugs for any disease is not complete until it is rationally done. Irrational prescriptions often lead to treatment failure, toxicity or drug interactions which may prove detrimental to the patient. Antibiotics are very much prescribed in day to day practice but their rational use prevents treatment failure, resistance.Methods: A cross sectional study was conducted in a tertiary care hospital to see the antibiotic prescribing pattern. Prescriptions were screened one time from different OPDs with prior permission from the doctor attending the respective OPD.Results: A total of 200 prescriptions were assessed out of which 121 had monotherapies prescribed, 79 had FDCs. Antibiotics were the most commonly prescribed drugs. Prescriptions having drug combinations were assessed and pantoprazole domperidone was the most commonly prescribed (32.91%).Conclusions: Drugs should be prescribed rationally for proper therapeutic benefit. It encourages the patient to properly use the medicine and properly comply to it.
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Background: In the recent years, large number of human pharmaceuticals have been introduced to the environment by landfill when household medications are thrown to trash and liquid medications gain access to the environment via liquid drainage systems. There is lack of knowledge and awareness in the general public regarding the safe disposal of unused and expired medicines. The objective was to assess the awareness regarding disposal of unused medicines among consumers at a tertiary care teaching hospital of north IndiaMethods: It was a cross-sectional observational questionnaire-based study carried out on 220 consumers in medicine outpatient department (OPD) of a tertiary care teaching hospital in North India for 3 months. All the participants were provided the pre-validated self-administered questionnaire. The final questionnaire consisted of twelve questions to assess participants’ knowledge and attitude towards disposal of the medicines. The data was analyzed with the help of descriptive statistics.Results: It is quite evident from the present study that majority of participants 56.36% stated 1-5 drugs were left-over drugs at their homes. Most of the leftover medicines were analgesics in 59.1% followed by antibiotics in 51.36%. Most common dosage form of these leftover medicines were tablets in 85.9% of respondents. Majority of the respondents (55.9%) were not aware of the adverse outcomes of the pharmaceuticals in the environment. The most common method followed by majority of the participants for disposing of the solid, semi-solid and liquid dosage forms was garbage in 95%, 91.4% and 76.4% of consumers respectively. About 9.31% of the participants were in favour of initiating a program to collect unused medications from home.Conclusions: It can be concluded from the present study that the consumers had poor knowledge regarding the safe drug disposal techniques. Therefore, efforts need to be done by the health care professionals to make people educate regarding the safe drug disposal techniques.
ABSTRACT
Background: The term teratogenicity is defined as any morphological, behavioral or biochemical effect induced during embryonic life or fetal life detected at birth or later. the factors that lead to teratogenicity include both non-genetic and genetic factors. The objective of the present study was to assess the impact of educational interventions on the awareness of undergraduate medical students towards teratogenicityMethods: The present study was a questionnaire-based comparative observational study carried out at Department of Pharmacology and Therapeutics, Government Medical College, Jammu (J&K) for a period of three months from 1st November 2017 to 31st January 2018. The questionnaire was designed and validated by conducting pilot study on a sample of ten students. The questionnaire comprised of two main parts. The first part comprised of questions pertaining to the demographic profile of the students and second part consisted of questions assessing the students’ knowledge and awareness towards teratogenicity. The scoring of the assessment of the performance of the students regarding knowledge of various aspects of teratogenicity was done before and after the educational intervention and was compared using paired t-test.Results: A total of 134 second year MBBS undergraduate students participated in the study. Mean age of students was 19.32±0.82 years. In the present study it was found that before the educational intervention about 98.5% of the students and after the intervention all the students were aware of the term teratogenicity. About 69.4% of students knew about all the causes that lead to teratogenicity but after the intervention about 76.1% of the students knew about it. Also, the percentage of students who knew about the name of two teratogenic drugs and two teratogenic defects associated with drugs were only 31.3% and 22.3% respectively. After the educational intervention it increased to 61.9% and 52.2% respectively.Conclusions: In the present study, it was found that after the educational intervention, there was a significant improvement in the mean knowledge score of the students. This reflects the need of early exposure of students to this important issue of teratogenicity.