Current status of passive tuberculosis detection in a rural district of J & K.

PIP: Tuberculosis affects one-fifth of mankind and kills more people than any other infectious disease; yet misdiagnosis and under-reporting are rampant. The situation in rural areas is especially disappointing. Despite decades of a national-level program for control of tuberculosis, no improvement has occurred in detection and reporting. Analysis and comparison of the records of the District Tuberculosis Centre in a rural district have shown almost no improvement in the dismal performance over the last full decade. The failure of passive detection of cases, especially the bacillary positive cases, has suggested that active detection coupled with epidemiological investigation is needed to boost routine case detection and to find out the bottlenecks in the implementation of the National Tuberculosis Program in rural areas.^ieng

Efficiency of weight / height ratio in detection of protein energy malnutrition in Gujjar, Bakarwal and Pahari pre-school children.

PIP: Field experience in developing countries has indicated that mild forms of protein-energy malnutrition may not be clinically discernible. This study investigated the efficiency of the weight-for-height2 ratio in predicting protein-energy malnutrition among 334 randomly selected preschool children from India's Guijar, Pahari, and Bakarwal populations. The weight-for-height2 measure (with a value of 0.0018 or more used as a cut-off for malnutrition) detected malnutrition in 69.76% of the preschool children [grade 1 (28.74%), grade II (22.75%), grade III (13.18%), and grade IV (5.09%) malnutrition]. Use of this ratio had a sensitivity of 86.27% and a specificity of 83.17% compared with the weight-for-age method, with predictive values of 92.20% and 74.41%. Although the weight-for-height ratio misclassified 16.83% of children with normal weight-for-age as malnourished, it is preferable to measures that rely on typically inaccurate age-related parameters.^ieng