ABSTRACT
Background: 'Stepping Stones' program is a cluster RCT aimed to improve parental competencies for early childhood development of children under 2 from rural India. Backed by Grand Challenges Canada, Saving Brains, this initiative focuses on multiple aspects of Early Childhood Development to enhance children's cognitive potential in their first 1000 days. This program aims to empower primary caregivers to promote overall child development. On March 22, 2020, India went into lockdown due to the Coronavirus Disease-19 (COVID-19) pandemic. The COVID-19 crisis has profound implications for the care and early childhood development intervention programs. In India, millions of children have limited access to nurturing care. Poverty and low education influence parent's ability to give their children the best start in early life. This further affects a child's development, health, well-being, and school readiness. Caregiver's knowledge about child development and their ability to gain and practice those skills is needed for stimulating a home environment conducive for early child development. This paper aims to study the effect of family-centered programs on caregivers and their children during COVID-19. Methods: This Cluster Randomized Trial was implemented in rural areas of India. Clusters were randomly divided into intervention and control arms. A total of 326 parents of children aged from 0 to 2 years were recruited through a phone survey. The intervention group received a family-centered parenting program for children aged 0-2 years for 6 months through e-platform. The control group received routine care. The baseline and end-line data on developmental scores of children were collected, and developmental scores were analyzed. Parents were assessed and analyzed for changes in knowledge and skills about child development. The effect of the intervention on the child development outcomes is analyzed. All analyses were performed using the STATA version 14. Results: At the endpoint, caregivers from the intervention group had significantly higher scores on knowledge for responsive parenting than those from their control arm. The statistically significant effect of the intervention was reflected on the home environment, mother-child interaction, motor, language, and socio-emotional development. Conclusion: During COVID-19, a family-centered parenting program has shown to be an effective approach for improving parents' competencies and confidence to improve their children's developmental scores.
ABSTRACT
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a highly infectious disease caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). As of April 17, 2020, the total number of cases all over the world read as 2,182,823 positive cases with 145,551 deaths and 547,679 recovered cases. In India, the total number of affected cases has alarmingly increased up to 13,430, crossing the 10 thousand mark with 11,214 active cases and 1768 recovered cases. There have been multiple studies and reviews published regarding the nature of the disease, its clinical symptoms and their progression, as well as findings on chest radiography, computed tomography, and positron emission computed tomography. A systematic literature search of the PubMed database was performed on April 8, 2020, using the suitable keywords and publications on novel coronavirus infection were also searched for in the WHO database. Only those articles published in the year 2020 were included. Data were collected, extracted, and tabulated for systematic reviewing from 26 original articles and 4 case series. The typical radiological findings on computed tomography for COVD 19 were ground-glass opacity with and without consolidation, isolated consolidation, air bronchogram, crazy paving, and interlobular septal thickening with subpleural lines. With the progression of the disease, other atypical radiological findings are noted, such as pulmonary atelectasis, peribronchial thickening, pleural effusion, pericardial effusion, mediastinal lymphadenopathy, reverse halo or atoll sign, and tree in bud appearance with bronchiectasis. Computed tomography proved as a useful tool for screening COVID 19 cases to delineate the status and severity of lung pathology.
ABSTRACT
The incidence of Depression, Anxiety and stress among the general population is steadily increasing due to outbreak of COVID-19 across the globe. Beyond the risks of COVID-19, concerns have been expressed to have mental effect on the general population due to COVID-19 lock down. The emotional impact is more among individuals with pre-existing medical diseases like hypertension, Coronary Artery Disease, Diabetes (DM) and psychiatric illness. The lockdown results in health anxiety, this can manifest as maladaptive behaviours (repeated medical consultations, avoiding health care even if genuinely ill, hoarding particular items);at a broader societal level, it can lead to mistrust of public authorities and scapegoating of particular populations or groups. There are very few data from India studying mental impact of lockdown due to COVID 19 among general population. In our study, we will assess DAS among rural population who are accompanying the Non-COVID 19 patients at a tertiary care rural hospital of central India in the era of lock down.