ABSTRACT
Background: India is the largest provider of generic medications globally. Despite this, several essential medicines remain inaccessible to majority of the general population, due to poor awareness, unavailability of drugs, distrust about the quality of the medicines, poor policy implementation and inadequate recommendation by doctors. Methods: A community-based cross-sectional study was carried out among 1151 adults in rural and urban areas attached to the community outreach area of a University Medical College. Written informed consent was taken from the participants. Data was collected using a pre-tested semi-structured online questionnaire and analysed using SPSS 15.0. Results: Knowledge regarding generic medicines was found to be low among the surveyed population (666, 57.9%), irrespective of their socio-economic status, education, occupation, place of residence or presence of chronic illnesses. As the knowledge was poor, participants were briefed about the generic medicines and their benefits. Thereafter, the attitude was assessed and found to be favourable among more than half (633, 55.0%) of the surveyed population. The usage of Generic medicines was found to be poor among the respondents. Only 53 (4.6%) of the total study population had switched from branded to generic medicines in the past six months as generic medicines were less expensive compared to their branded counterparts. Conclusions: The awareness about generic drugs and its usage was poor in the surveyed population. A favourable attitude towards generic drugs was achieved by educating the people about their similarity to branded medications. Therefore, there is a need to educate people not only about the quality, safety and efficacy of the generic medicines but also about the government initiatives like the Jan Aushadhi scheme.
ABSTRACT
The present investigation was conducted to study the effect of intra uterine infusion of 20 ml Lugol’s iodine (0.25 %) on day 5 (Group I; n= 18), day 17 (Group II n= 17) on reproductive performance as compared to untreated animals (Group III; n= 18). The average inter estrus interval in the animals in treatment group I (14.12 ± 0.396 days) was significantly (P<0.01) shorter than group II (23.93 ± 0.330 days) and control group III (20.93 ± 0.870 days). The average duration (days) for first postpartum fertile estrus was shortest (88.93 ± 10.053 days) in group I, followed by group II (106.46 ± 8.743 days) and control group III (113.72 ± 7.131 days). The number of artificial insemination (A.I.) required per conception was observed to be only 1.38 in group I while the values were 1.50 and 1.91 for group II and III, respectively.
ABSTRACT
The aim of this work was to study the herbicidal potential of Cell free culture filtrate of Colletotrichum dematium FGCC#20 against Parthenium by employing different bioassays i.e. shoot-cut, seedling, detached leaf and seed germination. On solvent extraction of the Cell free culture filtrate, Ethyl acetate extracted fraction showed the presence of phytotoxic moiety.