Background: Population ageing is a great concern for the health sector. The health-seeking behaviour of elderly individuals can help in ascertaining their needs and priorities to develop appropriate policies for their care and avert disease progression. Objective was to assess health seeking behaviour of the elderly residing in rural Puducherry.Methods: A community based cross-sectional descriptive study was conducted among the geriatric population residing in selected areas of rural Puducherry. Interviews using semi-structured pretested proforma were conducted for capturing information on health seeking behaviour.Results: Out of the total study participants, 403 (64.8%) were suffering from chronic illness. Around 81.1% of them were seeking treatment. Majority of the elders (97.9%) preferred Allopathy system for their chronic illness.Conclusions: Awareness among the elderly population is imperative and can be done by regular medical check-ups by ensuring early detection of the chronic diseases and curtail complications.

Introduction: COVID-19 has ensured that countries enforced complete lock down to prevent the spread of infection. Despite millions of people working from home during this pandemic situation, police personnel 'the front line workers' who deal with the general population to ensure their safety and wellbeing are at risk of stress and other mental health problems in addition to the risk of infection itself. Aim: The aim of this study is to explore the perception of police personnel towards the disease, factors influencing stress and coping abilities of them amid COVID-19. Methods: A cross-sectional qualitative study was conducted using in-depth interviews among randomly selected police personnel working in COVID-19 situation across the district of Karaikal, Puducherry. Results: Of the 32 police personnel, majority were of age group 36-45 (43.75%), followed by 25-35 (37.5%). More than half of them were married (78.12%). Around 62.5% had been in the present occupation for more than 5 years. The in depth interviews were group under 5 themes namely perception, practice they follow amid COVID-19, stress they go through, challenges faced, coping strategies used by them. Conclusion: It is the need of the hour to care for the well-being of frontline workers, especially police personals.

Background: Patient satisfaction is a crucial component of the health care system in today’s competitive modern era. There is a limited literature describing the patient satisfaction on AYUSH care and therefore this study was undertaken to assess the satisfaction about facilities, healthcare providers and treatment among the patients attending selected AYUSH-attached PHCs in rural Puducherry.Methods: A facility based cross-sectional study was conducted among the patients who attended AYUSH clinics at 4 selected PHCs of Puducherry over a period of one year. Personal Interviews using semi-structured pretested proforma was conducted for capturing information on socio-demographic variables, satisfaction regarding the facilities and health care providers. Telephonic interviews were conducted two weeks after the centre-based personal interviews, to assess the patients’ treatment satisfaction levels.Results: Out of the 584 patients interviewed, 71.23% rated as very good/excellent their interaction with the healthcare providers, with regards to satisfaction about the infrastructure facilities, the proportion rating very good/excellent ranged from 64.47% to 93.93% across the different AYUSH PHCs.Conclusions: Overall satisfaction about the quality of services and treatment was good among the patients.

India is currently facing shortage of trained health workforce, especially in rural areas. WHO recommends mainstreaming of Complementary & Traditional systems of medicine as an affordable & culturally acceptable way towards achieving Universal Health Coverage (UHC). Despite the Government of India operating AYUSH clinics in PHCs for more than 10 years, we know very little about patients attending these clinics. Exploring the reasons for utilization of AYUSH care is of much value for planning to scale up the integration of AYUSH. The required information on utilization of AYUSH services were obtained through a review of the literature in PubMed databases (including MEDLINE) using the medical subject headings (MeSH) terms: ‘AYUSH’, ‘utilization’, ‘Ayurveda’, ‘Siddha’, ‘Homeopathy’, ‘morbidities’. All such studies which have focussed on profiling of patients who sought care in AYUSH were the individuals who have non–life-threatening chronic diseases or conditions. To improve AYUSH based health care services, it is imperative to understand the acceptability of AYUSH interventions among the general public for the utmost utilization of AYUSH services.

Background: Diabetes autonomic neuropathy (DAN) is a complication of diabetes which has direct implications on the mortality of diabetes patients. American Diabetes Association (ADA-2017) guidelines recommend early recognition and treatment of DAN. In this regard, we conducted a study among diabetic patients treated in the selected PHCs of Puducherry to determine the proportion with DAN and to assess the factors associated with DAN.Methods: A cross-sectional analytical study was conducted among diabetics and information on socio-demographic details, morbidity and behavioural risk factors were elicited using semi-structured interview schedule. The COMPASS-31 questionnaire was administered to assess the autonomic neuropathy symptoms. The data was captured using EpiCollect mobile app and analysed using Stata 12.0 software. The proportion of DAN was expressed as percentage with 95% confidence interval. The association between independent factors and DAN was assessed using multivariate generalized linear models. The prevalence ratio with 95% CI was used to express the strength of association.Results: Of the total 303 individuals with diabetes, 32 {10.6% (95% CI: 7.3%-14.6%)} were screened positive for autonomic neuropathy using COMPASS-31 scale. The number of individuals with diabetes who needed to be screened (NNS) for finding one with autonomic neuropathy was 10 (303/32).Conclusions: One in ten individuals with diabetes was screened positive for autonomic neuropathy. With good yield, there is need for including autonomic neuropathy screening as a component in the comprehensive care provided to diabetes patients in the primary health centres.