Clinico-epidemiological profile of burns cases admitted to a tertiary care hospital in a coastal area of South India.

Background: Globally, approximately 2.5 lakh deaths occur every year, with majority of cases from low and middle income countries. Burns is one of the major cause of mortality and morbidity in India with around a million people affected by burns every year. This study has been aimed to study the socio-demographic profile of burn patients and also to evaluate the etiology, manner, and circumstances of occurrence of burn injuries along with their outcome. Methods: This record based retrospective study was conducted Kasturba Medical College, Mangalore Records were analyzed and information related to socio-demographic details, etiology of burns, place of burn, manner of burns were extracted. Data was entered and analyzed using SPSS version 11.5. Results: The study included 154 participants. Majority of the participants were in the age group of 21-30years (n=50, 32.5%) followed by 31-40 years (n=35, 22.7%).More than half of the participants were females (n=84, 55%). When the etiology for burns were analyzed most of the cases were due to scalds (n=64, 41.5%) followed by flames (n=n=58, 37%). More than three fourth of the burn cases were accidental in nature (n=128, 83.1%) followed by suicidal burns (n=22, 14.2%) Conclusions: Even in the era of technological advancement burns still remains as a major issue of concern in most of the developing countries including India. It

Knowledge and practices regarding biomedical waste management among healthcare professionals in tertiary care hospitals of Mangalore, India.

Background: Infections occurring from waste produced in health care establishments are more when compared to any other type of waste. There is inadequate and inappropriate knowledge of biomedical waste management among health care personnel which might have serious health consequences and pose a threat to the environment. This study was conducted to determine the knowledge of health care professionals about the proper disposal of biomedical waste and practice in following preventive measures while handling bio medical waste. Methods: This cross sectional study was conducted at three tertiary care teaching hospitals attached to Kasturba Medical College (KMC), Mangalore. Health care professionals comprising of doctors, nurses, lab technicians and class IV employees were enrolled in the study based on convenient sampling technique after obtaining their informed written consent. The data was collected using a pre tested, semi structured questionnaire. SPSS Version 16.0 was used for entering the data and analysis. Results: It was found that doctors had better knowledge compared to other health care professionals about the correct disposal of needles (n=56, 84.8%) and disposal of discarded medicines (n=45, 68.2%). Knowledge about the correct disposal of tubes and catheters were almost equal among doctors (n=47, 71.2%) and nurses (n=47, 73.4%). Only 44.5% (n=97) of health care professionals were utilizing all the personal protective equipments while handling bio medical waste. Conclusions: It can be concluded that the awareness regarding proper disposal of biomedical waste was better among doctors, staff nurses and lab technicians when compared to class IV employees.

Evaluation of Integrated Counselling and Testing Centres (ICTC) for HIV in a District of India

ICTCs provide a critical entry point for prevention, care and support for both people affected by HIV/AIDS and general population. The study was conducted with the objective of evaluating ICTCs in terms of infrastructure and staffing, services provided, level of utilization and quality of counselling. The structure and process evaluation of 13 ICTCs under National AIDS control programme III (NACP III) was carried out in a Coastal District of South India. The evaluation was carried out using UNAIDS Tools between July and September of 2010. Twelve out of 13 ICTCs (92%) had adequate infrastructure and staff. Most of the general clients (75%) attending ICTCs were provider initiated and 84.5% of antenatal women in the district attended pre-test counselling and also underwent HIV testing. Twenty six pre-test counselling sessions and 12 post test sero-positive counselling sessions were observed. Pre-test counselling content assessment revealed that only 57.4% of sessions address all the issues whereas, 79% of post-test sessions addressed most of the issues during counselling. Counsellors’ skills assessment information gathering and information giving were found to be poorly done. It was found that post test counselling sessions were not conducted for clients with HIV negative report. The aspects of ICTCs such as services provided at the centers, utilization of services by the clients, infrastructure and staffing pattern were found to be adequate. Counselling forms the vital component of the ICTC needed improvement and post test counselling should be mandatory to all the clients.