Social media, purpose, and use of it: A community-based cross-sectional study in a rural area of a developing nation (India)

Background: Over the past two decades, the world has witnessed drastic progress in the field of communication. Social media are the collective of online communications channels dedicated to community-based input, interaction, content-sharing, and collaboration. Objectives: The objectives of the study were to determine the prevalence of social media use, pattern, and purpose of use and usefulness for conveying health education. Materials and Methods: The current study was undertaken; in a rural community of Punjab province of India from September 2018 to February 2019. Participants were interviewed using a pre-designed, pre-tested structured interview schedule. Results: The total number of participants in the study was 4000. Six hundred eighteen (15.5%) had a smartphone and among them, nearly 90% were using internet. The proportion of male participants (22.9%) using smartphone was significantly higher than female. Seven hundred and forty-two (18.5%) had heard of any form of social media, in which WhatsApp (13.1%) was the most common. The prevalence of the use of social media among the participants was 13.5% (n = 542). Friendship and entertainment were the major purposes for using of social media. Nearly 80% of the social media users think that it should be used more for health education, but only 11.8% of the users thought that the government was using this platform very successfully. Young, male, educated, employed, and business class was using significantly more social media for communication. Conclusions: Media is changing as well as health care and medicine, so time has come to consider one of the cost-effective and popular media to solve complex and diverse problems of health and disease.

Pattern of Serious Adverse Events Associated with Administration of Different Vaccines: A US Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) Database Analysis

: Different vaccine adverse event surveillance systems have been developed down the years to act as an early warning system to detect signals regarding adverse events following vaccination. Different types of serious adverse events were characterized through the analysis of US VAERS registry. Methods: The VAERS data from 2010-2019 was analysed statistically for exploration of different types of serious adverse events and the signs and symptoms associated with administration of these vaccines. Vaccines implicated in serious adverse events through VAERS were further explored for correlates in WHO Vigibase database. Results: The maximum number of patients with serious events were administered FLU3 vaccine (n=4024, 12.71%), followed by PNC13 (n=2740, 8.66%), VARZOS (n=2310, 7.30%), PPV (n=1964, 6.20%) and HIBV vaccine (n=1448, 4.57%). Of all symptoms in patients with serious adverse events, pyrexia was the major symptom in patients with life threatening illness (16.06%), hospitalization (18.83%), prolongation of hospitalization (19.64%), disability (12.05%) and mortality outcome (9.95%). Among the top three vaccines implicated in serious adverse events, analysis through WHO Vigiaccess database found general disorders and administration site conditions and skin and subcutaneous tissue disorders to be the MedDRA major system organ classes for both pnemococccal and varicella zoster vaccine. Conclusion: FLU3 (Influenza), PNC13 (pneumococcal) and VARZOS (varicella zoster) vaccines were the top three vaccines implicated in serious adverse events through VAERS database analysis though a cause and effect relationship cannot be established through the this data alone.