ABSTRACT
Health communication forms an important link in a doctor patient relationship. Public health awareness lectures are organised across the world to disseminate key messages related to health and to improve the doctor patient interaction. With a plethora of information in this age of social media, which are many a time incomplete and erroneous, it is all the more important that people get the right information based on scientific evidence. In this article we intend to describe our experience of public awareness lectures held at AIIMS Bhubaneswar over the last one year.
ABSTRACT
Acute poisoning is an important medical emergency and one of the causes of death. A thorough knowledge of the profile of the victim is essential for management and prevention of poisoning. The present paper evaluates pattern of poisoning cases including deaths over a period of two years from 1999 to 2001 in Berhampur, Orissa. 53.3% of the cases were male with male to female ratio 1.14:1. Peak incidence was observed in the age group 21-30 years(124 cases). More than four-fifth of the cases belonged to medium socioeconomic status and 58.1% cases were from rural areas. Majority of the victims were literate and married outnumbered the unmarried cases. Occurrence of poisoning was more common in day time and during Summer season. Organophosphate compounds was the most commonly (22.9%) abused substance. Based on these findings preventive measures like restriction of sale and strengthening the legislature on availability of poison, promoting poison information center etc have been put forward.