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Background: Climate change has emerged as one of the greatest challenges of the present century. The current study explores the knowledge, attitudes and practices about climate change of the adults aged 18 years and above in Jammu city of North India.Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted among attendants of the patients visiting medical OPD of a tertiary care teaching hospital. A pilot tested questionnaire eliciting information on knowledge, attitudes and practices about climate change was administered to those who were willing to participate. The data collected was presented in proportions.Results: Majority (95%) of the respondents had heard of the term climate change, and 43.9% of them related it to changes in the weather pattern. Plastic use as a major cause of climate change was agreed upon by 95% of the respondents. About half of the respondents were very much concerned about climate change and 80% of them were very much interested in knowing more about climate change and its impact. Only 24.8% of the respondents read/watch stories on climate change.Conclusions: Knowledge levels of the respondents were found to be reasonably good but the same cannot be said about their attitude and practices. Role of NGOs, social communities and media is of utmost importance to make people aware of the harmful effects of climate change on both the environment as well as the health of the people.
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Background: Fired clay bricks, an important construction material, are manufactured in non-mechanized, labour intensive brick kilns which mostly employ unskilled men and women. The workers, as an occupational hazard, are exposed to dust and air pollution leading to respiratory diseases.Methods: This cross sectional study was conducted among brick kiln workers in RS Pura block of Jammu district. The workers were assessed regarding respiratory symptoms and illnesses using translated version of American Thoracic Society Division of Lung Disease questionnaire (ATS-DLD-78A).Results: 692 brick kiln workers were interviewed during the course of survey and 58.8%of them were males. 45% of the respondents were working since last less than three years. Among the respiratory symptoms chronic cough, was present in 23.55% and phlegm in 22.83% of the respondents. Chronic bronchitis was present in 20.52% of the respondents. Association of respiratory symptoms in relation to sex of the respondents was found to be statistically significant (p<0.05).Conclusions: Respiratory symptoms and illness were found to be quite prevalent in the brick kiln workers. More research needs to be conducted to assess other health risks besides respiratory morbidity. Health planners need to plan for their basic sanitation facilities and periodic check ups.
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Background: Cervical cancer is known for its late detection due to a variety of reasons chiefly lack of knowledge, undesirable attitudes and poor practices. Early screening and adequate knowledge about the disease remains the important safe guards against this disease. The study aimed to assess the knowledge, attitudes and practices of the women aged 18 years and above regarding cervical cancer visiting a tertiary care teaching hospital.Methods: The present cross sectional hospital based study was conducted in Jammu city, Jammu and Kashmir, India. All the women aged 18 years and above visiting OPD of gynaecology-obstetrics department of Government Medical College Jammu and willing to participate were administered a pretested questionnaire to collect the relevant data.Results: It was found that 91.56% of the respondents had heard of cervical cancer with 83% reporting that it was both preventable as well as curable. Multiple sex partners were the most important risk factor identified. Among the attitudes, 62% agreed that screening was harmless to the client. Only one third knew about the availability of preventive vaccine. About 83.6% of them had never been screened by Pap smear. However willingness to get HPV vaccination was found to be high.Conclusions: Though knowledge among the respondents was found to be adequate but it lacked transformation into attitudes and practices. In this connection, authors recommend health promotion campaigns to educate women and the community about cervical cancer and its preventability through screening.
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Background: Greek Physician Aretaeus (30-90CE) observed a disease with symptoms such as constant thirst (polydipsia), excessive urination (polyuria) and loss of weight. Based on these findings, he named the condition ‘diabetes’, meaning ‘a flowing through. Diabetes mellitus is a serious public health concern, not just because of its high prevalence or the chronicity, but more importantly because of its life-threatening micro vascular and macro vascular complications which are often silent and undetected until the advanced and irreversible stage has developed, and they may even appear years before the diagnosis of diabetes.Methods: A cross-sectional study was carried out on elderly (60 years and above). This study was intended to measure prevalence of diabetes mellitus and associated risk factors.Results: In present study, the prevalence of diabetes was found to be higher among female participants at 41.98% compared to males at 25.90%. Prevalence of diabetes was highest in the age group of 60-70 years. Mean BMI (28.05) of female participants was higher compared to the BMI of the male participants which was 25.52. It was observed that the prevalence of diabetes increases with increase in BMI.Conclusions: Early detection and treatment of these chronic morbidities should be done with regular health check- ups and screening of these diseases before they can cause permanent damage to health of individual or death. People should also be educated and counselled about monitoring their health parameters to ensure early detection and treatment.
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Violence against women a social evil in the society despite a lot of talk of women empowerment. Assessmentof burden in terms of prevalence will go a long way in planning the services for those affected bydomestic violence. To find the prevalence of domestic violence and associated risk factors among marriedfemales in a rural area of Jammu. This community based cross-sectional study was conducted amongrural married females using a structured and pretested questionnaire. Data was analysed using simpleproportions, chi-square test and logistic regression. 171/301(56.6%) of the respondents reported someform of the domestic violence. Psychological, physical and sexual violence rates were found to be32.16%, 9.9% and 2.33% respectively. A statistically significant association was found with variables likeliteracy, type of family, family income, sex of children etc. Relatively high levels of domestic violence inthis rural setting calls for a multidisciplinary approach involving improvement of literacy levels amongfemales, creating awareness about legal aid and screening the victims at primary health centres to mitigatethis problem.
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The current cross-sectional study was conducted over a period of on eyear. Eight villages were chosen from Miran Sahib zone of R.S Pura block using simple random sampling. A pre-designed, pre-structured and validated questionnaire was applied to all persons aged ?60 Years. A total of 418 subjects (191 males and 227 females) comprised the study population.64.40% of the respondents belonged to 60-69 year age group. Among the morbidity distribution in the study population, visual impairment (54.06%) was the most common, followed by hypertension (35.89%), arthritis (34.21%), diabetes mellitus (12.92%) and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (5.50%). COPD was higher in males and arthritis was higher in females and the gender disease association was found to be statistically significant (p<0.05). The results have shown high morbidity in the study population especially of visual impairment and cardio-vascular diseases. Respiratory diseases especially COPD morbidity was higher in males, while arthritis morbidity was more in females.