ABSTRACT
Background: The World Health Organization projects that by 2020, injuries will surpass infectious diseases as the leading cause of death worldwide. Therefore we conducted the present study with objective to identify trends of admissions and deaths of burn patients and to forecast the number of cases of admission and deaths in a tertiary care hospital, Maharashtra by using time series analysis.Methods: The present retrospective study was conducted at a tertiary care hospital of Maharashtra in the month of September 2017. Month wise admissions (7674 patients) and deaths (2865) of burn patients in last seventeen years (2000 to 2016) were used for this purpose. Data was analyzed by using SPSS version 16.Results: There was increasing trend of admissions of burn patients in December to January. Increase in the deaths was also observed in the months of February and March by simple seasonal model of Expert Modeler in SPPS. This predicted 30-44 admissions and 9-13 deaths of burn patients in the year of 2019.Conclusions: The trends and forecasting of admissions and deaths of burn patients will be useful for hospital administrators for management of cases.
ABSTRACT
Background: Hand washing with soap is a cost-effective tool of disease prevention, but most of the time it is overlooked. Use of contaminated hands enhances transmission of germs into body causing ill-health. Mothers clean, prepare, serve and feed the food. If this is coupled with poor knowledge and practice of hand washing it increases risk to spread of diseases to self, other family members especially to under-fives. Present study was conducted to address this issue being a critical factor in disease prevention. The objective of the present study was to determine the knowledge and practices of hand washing amongst mothers of under-fives.Methods: Present cross sectional study was conducted at UHTC, field practice area of Community Medicine, GMC, Latur amongst mothers of under-fives visiting UHTC to avail health services. The data was collected in a predesigned, pretested questionnaire by interviewing them.Results: Out of 204 mothers, 38.24% were from the age group of 24-26 and majority i.e., 69.61% were housewives. 99.02% mothers were aware that unwashed hands can transmit the diseases. Most of the mothers told that clean hands reduces food and water contamination. Maximum i.e., 97.57% mothers washed hands before eating and 71.57% washed before cooking. All the mothers washed hands after visiting toilet. Most mothers used soap and water (85.3%) for hand washing. Significant numbers of mothers, under-fives and other members suffered from diarrhea in last six months (p<0.05).Conclusions: Hand washing practices need to be followed at all critical moments for prevention of the faeco-oral infections.