Plight of Street Children: An Explorative Study from Varanasi, India.

Rapid pace of unplanned urbanization in the developing countries has resulted in a large proportion of children becoming homeless, leading to multiple children living on the streets. These children are highly vulnerable to exploitation and abuse. Against this background, studies on the situational analysis of street children across India are needed; therefore, a study to assess the condition of street children in the city of Varanasi was planned. Street children registered with a nongovernmental organization were contacted. Four hundred and fifteen children were selected by random sampling, and this group was administered a semi‑structured interview containing 35 items. It was found that all forms of abuse were common, but physical abuse (74%) was highest and the police (25.5%) was an important perpetrator. Younger children were much more vulnerable. The sample commonly had boys and between the ages of 10 and 15 years. It was concluded that these children need policies to be incorporated into the mainstream.

Burden of care and quality of life (QOL) in opioid and alcohol abusing subjects.

Background: Alcohol misuse is a major cause of morbidity and mortality and an important health care burden, the Quality of Life (QoL) of alcohol abusing subjects has been little studied to date. Aims & Objective: To assess the burden of care and quality of life of alcohol and opioid dependent subjects. Material and Methods: A cross sectional hospital based study was done. The sample consisted of 37 patients of mixed sex and their family members. The subjects were examined using a semi structured socio demographic profile performa, the WHOQOL-BREF quality of life assessment, Family Burden Interview Schedule (FBIS). Results: The overall mean scores for WHOQOL-Bref were not statistically significant between the alcohol (p=0.93) and the opioid (p=0.99) dependent groups and also the individual domains showed no significant difference between groups. Conclusion: Our study was conducted to analyse the quality of life and burden of care in alcohol and opioid dependent patients. The report of many subjects of poor quality of life during early withdrawal periods stresses the need for implementing ways of improving quality of life during this stage, to reduce relapse, and have better compliance of the detoxification and management measures. Our study also shows that the quality of life of alcohol users is equally poor when compared to that of opioid dependent subjects.