ABSTRACT
Background: H1N1 virus has caused a major pandemic worldwide creating a global havoc. The Infection till now has claimed over 14,000 lives. Even after the declaration of the end of pandemic there are still epidemics & sporadic cases reported from many parts of India, which shows that the lacunae left in the awareness among the people. Aims & Objective: (1) To find out the awareness regarding H1N1 influenza among urban population of Surendranagar. (2) To elucidate the correlation of the awareness with the socio demographic characteristics. Material and Methods: Sample selection was by simple random technique & size of the sample was 742. A cross sectional house to house survey was carried out. The obtained data was analyzed using SPSS for windows. Results: Out of the 742 subjects, 272 were males and 470 females with mean age of 37.31 ± 17.58. Out of the total no. of subjects, only 430 (57.95%) had heard of swine flu. Majority of the families (70.88%) were from Social Class 1 (Modified Prasad’s Classification). Out of those who had heard of swine flu, 43.48% of the individuals knew that the disease transmission was through Coughing, sneezing and airborne. About 42.99% of subjects knew about the major symptoms like fever, coryza and dyspnoea. Conclusion: There was a large no. of individuals in the population who had not heard of swine flu, indicating that in spite of the health education; there has been some loophole in conveying the knowledge regarding the disease to the people, showing an urgent need of more large scale IEC activities.
ABSTRACT
Background: Infectious diseases are a major cause of morbidity & mortality in children. One of the most cost effective & easy methods for child survival is immunization. In May 1974, the World Health Organization (WHO) officially launched a global immunization programme known as Expanded Programme of immunization (EPI) to protect all the children of the world against 6 Vaccine Preventable Diseases by the year 2000. It was later redesignated as Universal Immunization Programme (UIP) since 1985. The objectives of this study were to assess the dropout rate and primary immunization coverage of children aged 12-23 months in Surendranagar city and to know the various reasons for partially or not immunizing the child. Methods: A community-based cross-sectional study. Thirty clusters were selected out of a total of 282 blocks of Surendranagar using the cluster sampling method. Cluster sampling method was used for sample selection and the proforma designed by UNICEF was used as a study tool. Sample size was 210 children (7 Children from each cluster) of aged 12-23 months. The obtained data were analyzed using appropriate statistical tests like Z test and X2 test. Results: Out Of the 210 surveyed children, 121(57.62%) were males and 89(42.38%) were females. Immunization card was available for 69.52% of children and fully immunized were 70.47%. Coverage was highest for BCG (95.71%) followed by OPV3 (82.85%), DPT3 (79.52%) and lowest for measles (75.23%). As far as the dropout rate is concerned, it was 21.39%, 10.21%, and 9.37% for BCG to measles, DPT1 to DPT3, and OPV1 to OPV3, respectively. Amongst the various reasons main reasons for dropout or unimmunization of children were ignorance in about 64% and lack of information regarding time, place and schedule (21%). Conclusions: Improvement should focus on reducing the dropout rate from DPT2/OPV2 to DPT3/OPV3 and improving coverage of measles and also Vitamin A.