Background: Poor coverage of measles vaccine and shift in the age of incidence of rubella towards adolescents and young adults with low rubella vaccination coverage leads to outbreaks of congenital rubella syndrome and measles in India. Therefore the Government of India has decided to administer measles rubella vaccine to all children from 9 months to 15 years of age in campaign mode to eliminate measles and control rubella. The aims and objectives of the study were to assess the coverage of measles rubella vaccination among the slum children of Udupi Municipality area following the MR campaign.Methods: A community based cross sectional study was conducted for a period of one month among parents of beneficiary children in 312 households of the study population.Results: Study targeted 350 families in 14 localities of which 312 families were covered consisting 578 children. Amongst them 560 (97%) were immunized and 28 (5%) of them had minor side effects. Fever (89%) was the most common side effect. Among those who were not vaccinated 18 (3%) nearly half of them (44%) were not aware of ongoing campaign and 22% as per physician’s advice.Conclusions: In the present study, coverage of MR vaccine was 97% and 88.1% (275) of the families studied knew about the MR campaign while only 267 (85.6%) actually received the MR vaccine.

Background: Compliance with standard precautions reduces the risk of exposure to blood and body fluids. The awareness regarding infection control and appropriate practices among hospital support staff is critical to prevent HAIs. Hence this study was conducted with the objectives of evaluating the awareness regarding standard precautions for infection control among hospital support staff and to identify the barriers, if any, to comply with standard infection control protocol among them. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted in a tertiary care hospital after obtaining the necessary ethical clearance and required permissions. Sample size was calculated to be 80. Written informed consent was taken from the participants. A questionnaire in the local language was used to collect the data. The statistical analysis was done using SPSS version 15. The results were expressed as proportions. Chi-square test was applied to study the association. Results: 81 workers participated in the study. 91.4% knew that hand washing is the most effective way to prevent health care associated infections. 75.3% were aware about categories of wastes. Among 59 staff who were liable to come in contact, 57 (96.6%) used protective barriers while serving HIV/TB patients. 51.9% of the participants were vaccinated against Hepatitis B infection. Conclusions: The awareness and practices of the hospital support staff regarding standard precaution for prevention of infection was inadequate.