Menstrual Hygiene: A Study Among Rural Adolescent Girls In Katihar.

BACKGROUND: Menstruation is an important milestone event in a girl's life with the beginning of reproductive life. Still, menstruation and menstrual practices are clouded by taboos and socio-cultural restrictions, particularly in rural areas leading to ignorance of adolescent girls regarding menstrual hygiene practices and its scientific facts. AIMS AND OBJECTIVES:1. To find out status of menstrual hygiene practices among adolescent girls. 2.To find out association between different socio-demographic factors and menstrual hygiene. MATERIALANDMETHOD:Across sectional study was conducted between March 2017 to September 2017 among 400 adolescent girls (10-19 years) of rural area of Katihar. Data were collected from 273 girls, who have achieved menarche, on a pre tested and pre designed questionnaire after taking parental consent and was analysed using MS Excel and Epi info 7. RESULT:Menarche was found to be achieved by the girls in age group 10-16 years, mostly in the age group 12-13 years (69.59%). Among 273 respondents, 82(30.04%) girls were aware about menstruation prior to menarche and the source of information was mostly sister (54.95%) followed by friends (19.05%) and mothers (15.75%). In my study, only 31 (11.36%) girls used sanitary pads during menstruation. Majority of them (95.24%) were using soap and water to clean external genitalia while more than half of girls (69.60%) did not possess a covered toilet. Menstrual hygiene was taken care mostly by those girls, whose mothers were literate (77.42%). Around 260 (95.23%) of the participants followed one or the other cultural restrictions and majority (76.15%) were avoiding religious functions. CONCLUSION:In our study, hygiene during menstruation is not satisfactory hence there is a need to educate the adolescent girls about healthy and hygienic practices during menstruation to prevent the reproductive tract infections.

A study of nutritional anemia among urban primary school children of Katihar

Background: Children health is an important concern for all societies since it contributes to overall development. The present position with regards to health and nutritional status of children is not satisfactory despite of mid-day meal programme running in government run schools. This study is conducted to assess the proportion of children, aged between 6 year to 11 years having anemia and socio demographic factors associated with iron deficiency anemia among selected children.Methods: For the purpose of study a list of all government primary schools of Katihar had been prepared and equal numbers of students were examined from randomly selected schools. By taking the prevalence of anemia 50% among school children for confidence level 95% with 10% relative precision with sample size comes out to be 384. The sample size was doubled to cover both boys and girls in the study. A total of 800 students (426 boys and 374 girls) in the age group of 6-11 years were interviewed and examined.Results: Out of 800 children total 343 (42.88%) were anemic. The prevalence of anemia was 37.96% among boys and 48.07% among girls. The prevalence of mild and moderate anemia among boys was 32.05% and 67.95% and 70.8% and 29.2% among girls respectively. The prevalence of anemia was high among lower and upper lower socio-economic status (100% and 45.32%). The proportion of anemic children showed a significant association with education of mother and nutritional status. Proportion of anemia decreased significantly with increase in education status of mother.Conclusions: The prevalence of anemia was found high among primary school children. Major factors which influence the prevalence of anemia were socioeconomic status, mother education and nutritional status of children.

A Study On Colostrum And Exclusive Breast Feeding Practices And Its Determinants In Rural Mothers Of Katihar, Bihar

Breastfeeding, also known as nursing, is the feeding of babies and young children with milk from a woman‘s east. Breastfeeding has a number of benefits to both mother and baby, which infant formula lacks. Breastfeeding decreases the risk of respiratory tract infections and diarrhea. Other benefits include lower risks of asthma, food allergies, celiac disease, type 1 diabetes, and leukemia.Breastfeeding may also improve cognitive development and decrease the risk of obesity in adulthood. Benefits for the mother include less blood loss following delivery, better uterus shrinkage, weight loss, and less postpartum depression. Long term benefits for the mother include decreased risk of east cancer, cardiovascular disease, and rheumatoid arthritis. Breastfeeding is less expensive than infant formula.Colostrum is the first east milk produced after birth and is important for promotion of health and prevention of infections of the newborn immediately after birth. Though the eastfeeding practices are well known to mothers but the necessity of colostrum feeding is still poorly understood especially by the mothers in rural areas due to various factors. World Health Organization (WHO), recommend eastfeeding exclusively for six months. After the introduction of foods at six months of age, recommendations include continued eastfeeding until at least one to two years of age.

Musculoskeletal Complications and Surgical Needs of Patients with Haemophilia

Background: Musculoskeletal problems in haemophiliaoccur due to delayed therapy or lack of detection, leading to joint damage and other complications Orthopaedic surgery is one option to improve deformity of haemophilic patients caused by repeated bleeding. Materials and Methods:This study includes 85 patients in which all musculoskeletal survey was done . Observation and Results: Surgery was recommended in 51 (60%) patients (37 severe haemophilia, 12 moderate and 2 mild). Minor surgery was most common in younger patients, while major surgeries increased proportionately with patient age. Conclusion: Insufficient use of factor replacement and lack of regular supply of factor are major cause for joint damage and other musculoskeletal problems in haemophilic patient.This study is beneficial for assessment of the grade of musculoskeletal problem and identification of the surgical needs of the haemophilic patients.

Effectiveness of using teachers to screen eyes of school-going children in Satna district of Madhya Pradesh, India.

Aim: To assess the effectiveness of teachers in a vision screening program for children in classes 5th to 12th attending school in two blocks of a district of north central India. Materials and Methods: Ophthalmic assistants trained school teachers to measure visual acuity and to identify obvious ocular abnormalities in children. Children with visual acuity worse than 20/30 in any eye and/or any obvious ocular abnormality were referred to an ophthalmic assistant. Ophthalmic assistants also repeated eye examinations on a random sample of children identified as normal (approximately 1%, n=543) by the teachers. Ophthalmic assistants prescribed spectacles to children needing refractive correction and referred children needing further examination to a pediatric ophthalmologist at the base hospital. Results: Five hundred and thirty teachers from 530 schools enrolled 77,778 children in the project and screened 68,833 (88.50%) of enrolled children. Teachers referred 3,822 children (4.91%) with eye defects for further examination by the ophthalmic assistant who confirmed eye defects in 1242 children (1.80% of all screened children). Myopia (n=410, 33.01%), Vitamin A deficiency (n=143, 11.51%) and strabismus (n=134, 10.79%) were the most common eye problems identified by the ophthalmic assistant. Ophthalmic assistants identified 57.97% referrals as false positives and 6.08% children as false negatives from the random sample of normal children. Spectacles were prescribed to 39.47% of children confirmed with eye defects. Conclusions: Primary vision screening by teachers has effectively reduced the workload of ophthalmic assistants. High false positive and false negative rates need to be studied further.

Heterologous expression of staphylococcal enterotoxin B (seb) gene for antibody production

Staphylococcal food poisoning (SFP) is caused by the members of superantigen family called staphylococcal enterotoxins (SEs). About 20 different types of SEs are produced by Staphylococcus aureus out of which type A (SEA), B (SEB), C (SEC) and D (SED) are commonly implicated in SFP. Among these, SEB is the most potent toxin and has also gained the status of biological warfare (BW) agent. Therefore, detection of SEB is of utmost importance. Any immunological detection system for SEB requires specific and sensitive antibodies which inturn depends on the purity of the SEB. In the present investigation, seb gene of S. aureus was cloned and expressed in E. coli along with biotin as fusion partner to facilitate the purification process. The yield of purified recombinant SEB was 13.1 mg/L of culture broth. Biotin tag from the biotinylated toxin was removed by protease cleavage, and both biotinylated and non-biotinylated toxin types were used for raising hyperimmune antiserum. Antisera were also specific for SEB amongst different kinds of food poisoning agents tested by indirect plate ELISA and western blot analysis. The quality of the antisera raised in this study was found superior to the commercially available antiserum. The investigation suggests that construction of recombinant staphylococcal enterotoxin B is a good alternative for production of pure enterotoxin to be used in antibody generation.