Anemia is associated with poor health outcomes, and the prevalence of anemia is a significant public health indicator for both developed and developing countries. Iron-deficiency anemia (IDA) is the most common type of anemia, which often develops during pregnancy. A cross-sectional study was conducted in the urban areas of Quetta city among the women of reproductive age (15-49 years) to update the status of IDA in the region. The study participants ( n = 216 ) were selected on a random basis, and the samples were further distributed by age. Overall, 75% of females were nonanemic, and among those that were anemic, 2% were severe, 13% were moderately, and 10% were mildly anemic. Among the IDA-affected women, 83% were non-pregnant. Age-wise distribution of IDA revealed no significant difference among different age groups, but numerically higher observations were recorded in the age groups of less than 30 years. The highest number of moderately IDA-affected women (15%) were in the age group 15-19 with the following IDA indicating parameters: hemoglobin 9.64 g/dl, mean corpuscular volume 63.11 fl, mean corpuscular hemoglobin 20.40%, red cell distribution 19.28%. This study will be beneficial for illustrating the requirement and the development of a program to raise extended awareness in the Quetta communities to overcome the negative health effects of IDA on the female population.

Objective: Present study was carried to formulate and evaluate the transdermal ointment containing the metformin HCl active ingredient and to assess their Physicochemical studies. Methods: Metformin HCl ointment was prepared with various thymol oil concentrations. Ointments were assessed with different characterizations; Physical appearance, viscosity, pH, drug content, Consistency, homogeneity, consistency. Differential scanning calorimetry analysis, XRD studies. It was used in vitro via using Franz cells along with the use of two membranes i.e. Nylon and cellulose membrane. Results: SEM and XRD studies showed that there were no physical and chemical interactions between excipients and drug. All the formulations showed good physicochemical characteristics. The formulation showed different releases. It was observed that nylon had better release properties as compared to cellulose. Conclusion: In the study conducted here, it was observed that Nylon membrane showed better discriminating power to compare among the formulation. This indicates that it has gotten prime importance to watch the effect of the membrane upon the release pattern of the various formulations. In order to improve the formulation, we can use in vitro diffusion cell experiments of transdermal drug delivery.

This study was designed to investigate the prevailing status of Trichomonas vaginalis, a protozoan parasite causing urogenital tract infections in human beings, in Quetta, Balochistan, Pakistan. As no documented study of this kind has been conducted so far, it was designed to obtain the overall prevalence of T.vaginalis infection. Through conventional wet mount technique, its morphological identification by staining techniques and with PCR confirmation. In addition to investigation of age-wise and gender-wise prevalence of T.v, its correlation with reproductive disorders was also investigated through a questionnaire proforma while taking urine samples. For this purpose six hundred (600) urine samples (300 samples from each gender) were collected from the public sector hospitals located in Quetta city. The study was designed in three age groups as G1: 21-30, G2: 31-40, and G3: 41-50 years of each gender. A total of four samples were found positive microscopically only in female patients, whereas three of these positive samples were confirmed as T. vaginalis by PCR using BTUB9/2 set of primers. The fourth positive sample might be the specie other than T.vaginalis. It is concluded that the overall prevalence of T.v amongst females was observed as 0.1%, while the samples from males were found negative for T.v. so the overall percentage in total samples found as 0.5%.

The second wave of COVID-19 pandemic has started globally, right now 220 countries are infected and a total of 71,351,695 confirmed cases and 1,612,372 deaths due to COVID-19 have been reported. Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) measures for COVID-19 all have proved vital in decreasing the transmission rates among the communities. Methodology: Unmatched Case-Control Study was conducted where cases were defined as "every PCR positive contact (symptomatic or asymptomatic) for any index case" similarly controls were defined as "every PCR negative contact (symptomatic or asymptomatic) for any index case who was home quarantined for 14 days based on suspicion by PDSRU team". A simple random technique was used and 300 individuals were made part of this study. Results: The major findings of this study shows that PCR positive contacts poorly adopted certain COVID-19 IPC measures of interest in their daily life hence got infected.