Background: Gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) is a growing epidemiological problem. GDM is defined as the glucose intolerance during pregnancy. Treatment of GDM is important to avoid maternal and fetal complications. The objectives of this study was to assess the knowledge about GDM among antenatal mothers and to find out the association between knowledge and demographic factors.Methods: A descriptive cross sectional study was done among 191 antenatal mothers in Maternity Health Centre and Government Hospital, Chidambaram during September 2017. A pre tested questionnaire was used to assess knowledge about GDM among all antenatal mothers attending OP.Results: Among the participants, 49.2% were in the age group of 21–25 years, 93.7% of them were housewives, 56.0% of them have studied up to higher secondary level and 72.8% of them were living in rural areas. In this study it was found that 35.2% of the participants had adequate knowledge about GDM and 21.5% had adequate knowledge about its risk factors. Education and residence were found to be associated with knowledge and risk factors of GDM which is statistically significant (p<0.05).Conclusions: The knowledge of antenatal women on GDM was just average. There is a need for training the physicians, paramedical people, and public regarding GDM. Health education programs must be conducted to improve the awareness among antenatal women for better utilization of health services. A regular screening of GDM among all pregnant women should be promoted in all health centres.

Background: Delay in seeking health care is one of the key factors leading to maternal death, which can be associated with lack of awareness about obstetric danger signs. So, it is essential that pregnant women should be aware about danger signs of obstetric complications so that they can seek timely healthcare. This study aims to assess level of awareness about danger signs of pregnancy among ANC attendant pregnant women and to assess the factors associated with it.Methods: A descriptive cross-sectional study was done among 170 pregnant women. The level of awareness about danger signs were assessed by administering pre tested proforma to the participants. The collected data was entered in Microsoft excel 2010 and the data was compiled analysed usingSPSS version 21.Results: Of the total participants, only 29.3% had good awareness and about 69.3% had fair awareness about danger signs of pregnancy. It was found that increasing maternal age had significant association with awareness about danger signs whereas other factors like type of family, education, residence, order and duration of pregnancy, number of an visits, previous risk pregnancies had no significant association with level of awareness about danger signs.Conclusions: Level of awareness about danger signs among pregnant women was average. Thus, provision of health education, empowering women and improving the quality of health services can be the recommended interventions.

Background: Diabetes mellitus is one of the most common non-communicable diseases causing many serious complications worldwide. Therapeutic non-compliance leads to treatment failure thus making diabetes a serious problem to both the individuals and the health care providers. There are many factors which influence patient’s compliance. The aim of this study is to assess the frequency of therapeutic compliance and factors associated with therapeutic non-compliance.Methods: A descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted among type 2 diabetes mellitus patients attending the urban health centre, Chidambaram.  Compliance and factors associated with non-compliance were assessed using Morisky Medication adherence questionnaire.Results: 108 diabetic patients were enrolled. The overall compliance rate was found to be 39.8%. A statistically significant association was found between non-compliance and associated chronic diseases (p=0.007), financial problems to buy the medicines (p=0.001), reporting side effects with the prescribed medicines (p=0.049), missed at least one dose in last one week(p=0.01).Conclusions: Majority of the patients were non-compliant. This emphasizes the need of strengthening health system and improving patients knowledge through teaching programs.