Background: Scrub typhus is the most common rickettsial infection in the Indian subcontinent with the manifestation ranging from mild symptoms to serious disease with or complication or death. The objective of this study was to study epidemiology and clinical profile of scrub typhus outbreak in a tertiary care centre of central India. Methods: Present study is a record based retrospective study enrolling 173 confirmed positive cases with ELISA test during the period from 1 st August to 31 st December 2018. Results: Maximum number of the cases 94 (54.3%) had occurred in September 2019. Majority of the female 94(54.3%) were Ig M positive for scrub typhus. Maximum cases 134 (77.5%) were from rural area. Most common symptoms were fever 170 (98.3%), followed by fever with chills 65 (37.6%), breathlessness 49 (28.3%), cough 35 (20.2%), and 28 (16.2%) each with altered sensorium and headache. Mortality was recorded in 30 (173%) and amongst them 10 (34.5%) and 4 (13.8%) cases had ARDS and septicaemia as complication respectively. Conclusions: This study shows that majority of the cases occurred in the month of September 2018 with female preponderance. Most of the residence were from rural areas with common presenting symptoms as fever or fever with chills followed by breathlessness, cough and altered sensorium and headache.

Background: Unmet need of contraception remains a national problem. The study was conducted among the mothers attending immuno-prophylaxis clinic (IPC) at tertiary care centre of central India to determine the use of different types of contraception and assess the unmet need for contraception along with the reasons associated with the unmet needs of contraception. Aim and objective was to study the contraceptive use, reasons for unmet needs amongst the mothers attending IPC and some related factors.Methods: This was a cross-sectional study conducted during the period from February-April 2016 at IPC in tertiary care setting. In this study 280 mothers attending IPC for Measles and DPT 1st booster of their child were enrolled. The sample population was selected by simple random sampling method. A pre-tested structured questionnaire was used to collect data from the respondents with written informed consent.Results: This study shows that, 65% of mother told they were practicing any type of family planning method. Unmet need for contraception was 37.14 per cent. Among those having unmet need (n=104), fear of side effects (41.35%), infrequent sex (25%) were the common reasons for unmet need. Religion, age of marriage, age at 1st pregnancy, education, socioeconomic status, occupation of husband, counselling about contraceptives during ANC/PNC visits and resumption of menses were significantly associated with the use of contraceptives.Conclusions: The unmet need for contraception was quite high. Most of the study subjects were not using contraception due to fear of side effects and lack of knowledge.