Prevalence of smoking among Egyptian school students living in Cairo

The present study was conducted in selected schools in Greater Cairo including both high and low socioeconomic areas [Heliopolis and El- Waily, respectively] randomly chosen. One thousand students were recruited through multistage random sampling. A self-administrative questionnaire was used and included questions demonstrating the socioeconomic data of the studied students and questions about the smoking habit, risk factors for starting smoking as well as health beliefs concerning this habit. Urinary continence was estimated in a sub sample of the students as a confirmatory test. The questionnaire revealed a total prevalence of smoking of 8%, most of them were from El-Waily area. Urinary continine revealed a possibility of nine extra smokers in Heliopolis which would raise the prevalence from 1% to 19% in this area. Causes of starting smoking were found to be mainly freedom from family bonds. Increased number of siblings and more pocket money were detected as risk factors. The fathers and mothers education and occupation had no role in their sibs smoking yet having smokers in the family affected the incidence of smoking. Most students swallowed rather than blew their tobacco and the source of their first cigarette was mainly a friend

Initiation of neonatal feeding at maternity hospitals in Egypt

This work was conducted on 500 mothers and their respective neonates who were delivered and randomly recruited from different maternity hospitals at Cairo, so as to identify the type and time of initiation of neonatal feeding. A predesigned questionnaire was used, based on WHO formulation, to collect data from mothers about initiation of neonatal feeding. The study revealed 57 percent of mothers were practicing colostrum feeding. However, almost half of mothers [46.9 percent] ignored the value of giving colostrum, and 0.3 percent of mothers denied completely its value. Prelacteal feeds, mainly dextrose 5 percent and/or surgary water, were given by the majority of mothers [92.4 percent]. A high percentage of mothers [70 percent] initiated breastfeeding 24 hours after delivery while those who initiated <1 hour after delivery were only 1.4 percent. So, it is assumable that the practice of [BF] among mothers was higher than their grades of knowledge and attitude [P<0.05]. Delayed initiation of [BF] was owed to maternal causes; no milk let down [64 percent], mothers exhaustion [31.4 percent] and breast problems [30.5 percent] followed by medical factors as postpartum medication [33.6 percent], medical advice [16.4 percent] and no rooming-in practice [10.6 percent]. Neonatal factors as prematurity [3.6 percent] and refusal of newborn to suck [1.6 percent] represented the minority of conditions. Exclusive [BF] was practiced only by 7.6 percent of mothers, while 78 percent of neonates were predominantly breastfed and 4 percent of neonates were formula fed. Therefore this study attributes most of the factors impeding the practice of early initiation of BF either to the lack of knowledge of mothers or the lack of antenatal and postnatal care for both mothers and their infants