Introduction: Postpartum period or puerperium is the first six weeks after child birth, when the body undergoes major physiological changes. It is a critical transition time for women affecting significantly her physical as well as mental health. Objectives: To assess the knowledge, practice and attitude of mothers towards postnatal exercise and to find out the association between demographic variables and knowledge, attitude, practice of postnatal exercise among mothers. Materials and Methods: A cross sectional study, based on a semi structured pretested questionnaire which was distributed to mothers during a period of 1 month (December-January 2019) in a rural area of Kulasekharam, Kanyakumari district Tamil Nadu. Results: In our study 22% of participants had adequate knowledge on postnatal exercise. 52% had a positive attitude towards postnatal exercise and 58% practiced postnatal exercises. A strong association has been found between knowledge, attitude, practice and some demographic variables (education, occupation and socioeconomic status). Conclusion: Data revealed that our participants had poor Knowledge and Practice, but more than half had a positive attitude towards practicing postnatal exercise. Hence health education and awareness programs for pregnant women as well as their family members regarding postnatal exercise must be introduced right from the antenatal period to improve the current scenario.

COVID pandemic with repeated outbreaks is associated with newer genomic variants and bound to create professional fatigue, which needs a community-based strategy to control the disease. During March 2021, the Tirunelveli district health authority adopted a Community Sustained Multidisciplinary Approach (CSMA) and was hypothesised to be more productive in managing the 2nd wave. It was a community-centric approach with primary prevention, early diagnosis & referral, early treatment and reduction of morbidity and mortality. The strategy included community-friendly lock-down with social security, community sustained micro-containment, women self-help group sustained hamlet level screening and a time-sensitive patient referral with monitoring of oxygen requirement. This study concludes that resource-constrained public health systems need to adopt a community-based approach to contain the pandemic efficiently, as demonstrated in Tirunelveli district through a Community Sustained Multidisciplinary Approach. This unique public health approach had a vital role in the efficient containment of the pandemic.

The rising burden of non-communicable diseases and the number of people with non-Communicable diseases (NCDs) missing out on regular care due to the fear of contracting COVID-19 paved way for a new health policy called Tamil Nadu Doorstep Healthcare Scheme (Makkalai Thedi Maruthuvam) in 2021. Though the process of policy making has been described through various frameworks, Kingdon's multi stream policy is a dynamic model that explains political agenda setting for specic health issues. Kingdon suggests that public policy comprises of three independent streams namely problem stream, policy stream and political stream.

Background & objectives: Establishing concrete evidence on effect of vaccination on severity of SARS CoV-2 infections in real world situations is the need of the hour. The aim of this study is to estimate the effectiveness Covid 19 vaccines in preventing the new and severe SARS CoV-2 infections. Methods: We did this retrospective cross-sectional study among the 4765 patients consecutive adult inpatients admitted in the Covid 19 wards of a tertiary care hospital from May 1,2021 to July 7, 2021 during the second wave of Covid 19 pandemic. Information on basic demographic variables, RT PCR status, vaccination status, outcome and clinical severity of illness were obtained from the electronic hospital patient records. Results, and Interpretation & conclusions: Type of vaccine and number of doses of vaccines didnot have any protective effect against new SARS CoV-2 infection. Covid 19 patients vaccinated with at least one dose had 75 % less risk of requiring oxygen (OR 0.25 CI: 0.15 to 0.44) and 60 % less risk of ICU admission (OR 0.4 CI: 0.2 to 0.6) and it was statistically significant. Only 31 % of fully vaccinated Covid 19 positive patients had oxygen requirement (90% less risk) and 15% of the fully vaccinated patients had needed ICU admission (90% less risk). Conclusion: Vaccination didnot protect against SARS Cov-2 infection however significant protection was documented against severe SARS Cov-2 infection. Vaccination coverage should be increased urgently in order to halt the impending wave of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection.