ABSTRACT
Background: Infant mortality is an important health indicator of a population given its strong link to socioeconomic status, health service access, and quality and maternal health. The declining trend of Infant Mortality Rate has been observed in India where it reduced from 89 deaths per 1000 live births in 1990 to 28 deaths per 1000d live births in 2019. Most of the studies regarding the trend of infant mortality are state-based, however, state-level infant mortality has masked the intradistrict clustering of individual infant deaths. Hence, this study was planned with an objective to study the trend of infant mortality at the district level. Material and Methods: A retrospective study was conducted in the district Rohtak of Haryana using the data collected regarding infant deaths. The collected data regarding addresses were geocoded. The resulting layer was then analyzed using QGIS v3.10. The descriptive data was analyzed using SPSS v20.0. Result: In total, 1336 infant deaths during the study period were included. A declining trend of infant mortality was observed over the study period. The number of grids (25 km2) reduced from 18 in 2016 to 10 in 2019 depicting a reduction in the areas with more than expected count. Conclusion: This study emphasizes on the importance of using the geographic information science technique in identifying local hotspots within the district so as to find areas that need more support and observation.
ABSTRACT
Aim: Digital device usage, especially during the pandemic, has catapulted into a new age problem, the computer vision syndrome. This study aimed to quantify the prevalence and determinants of digital eye strain (DES). Subject and Methods: A total of 345 university students in India were surveyed in June-July 2022, by a validated tool, the Computer Vision Syndrome Questionnaire (CVS-Q) © in this cross-sectional study. According to American Optometric Association, digital eye strain and computer vision syndrome are synonyms. Non-parametric tests of medians were used to compare the median DES scores, Chi square test to compare categorical variables, and binary logistic regression to find the determinants of DES. Results: The average age of the study participants was 21.0 ± 2.2 years, ranging between 18-26 years with 52.8% females and 47.2% males. The prevalence of DES was 45.5% (CI 95% = 40.2%-50.8%). Any existing eye disease (p-value = 0.000, OR = 0.41, 95% CI = 0.26-0.65), average daily screen time (p-value = 0.001, OR = 1.61, 95% CI = 1.22-2.13) and using gadgets in the dark (p-value = 0.000, OR = 0.37, 95% CI = 0.23-0.61) were significant determinants of the same. Conclusion: Framing guidelines limiting the hours allotted for online classes for university students are imperative, with promotion of ergonomic practices for digital device usage such as blue light filters and night mode on devices.
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: Adolescents are being involved in aggressive activities nowadays. Sometimes, involvement in aggressive activities may be fatal for the victim as well as for the doer. It is a matter of great concern for all including parents, teachers, psychologists, social reformers, and others. A momentary expression of anger sometimes may spoil the future life of the adolescents. AIM AND OBJECTIVES: To determine the prevalence of aggression and to identify the psychosocial risk factors associated with aggression among school-going adolescents. METHODOLOGY: The study recruited 480 school-going rural adolescents from eight government senior secondary schools in the rural block of Beri, district Jhajjar (Haryana). OBSERVATIONS: The mean age of the adolescents was 14.11 ± 1.12 years; 49.4% of the adolescents were found to be aggressive. After applying binary logistic regression, there was a statistically significant relation between aggression and determinants like class, gender, occupation of the father. CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS: The study concluded that determinants like age, class of students, gender of the subject, occupation of father found a significant association with aggression. To solve this current situation, parents must give love, attention to their children and must act in an appropriate way in front of them and be role models.
