Background:Female feticide, skewed sex ratio, and its attendant social evils have grave ethical undertones for medical professionals and our commitment to save lives. A concerted effort by all is essential against female feticide.Aim:This study was to assess the knowledge of female feticide, declining sex ratio, and corrective measures among medical interns.Materials and Methods:A cross-sectional study was conducted among 79 medical interns. Data werecollected with the help of predesigned structured questionnaire. Chi-square tests, Kruskal-Wallis tests, and Z tests were used to test the significance level.Results:Knowledge of current sex ratio was significantly better among female interns than male interns. Majority of interns opined that creating awareness is an effective measure to combat declining sex ratio and only 33 interns had correct knowledge regarding all measures. Only 37.9% of interns knew all the legal indications for use of prenatal diagnostic techniques. However, 81% of interns were aware of punishments mentioned for violation of the Act. Mean score of knowledge was 22.06 among males and 24.4 among females.Conclusion:The findings in our study underline the need to sensitize doctors regardingevery aspect of Pre-Conception and Prenatal Diagnostic Techniques Act and selective sex determination.

Hospital-acquired infection (HAI) in healthcare settings is the most frequent adverse event in healthcare delivery worldwide. Hundreds of millions of patients are affected by HAI worldwide each year, leading to significant patient mortality rates and financial losses for health systems. We evaluated the impact of a sensitization workshop on knowledge and awareness of HAI among nurses in a medical college hospital in rural area of Ahmednagar district, India from March 2010 to August 2010. One hundred staff nurses, who had more than one year of experience, had attended the workshops on HAI. Pre-and post-test data was collected by a questionnaire. A significant increase in number of nurses having knowledge regarding commonly occurring HAI and routes of transmission , barrier nursing and hygienic hand washing techniques, hospital waste management (its importance and color coding), and the importance of an infection control team was observed after the workshop. Education and training of healthcare workers about standard infection control can reduce the extent of risks of HAI. Nurses have a critical role to play in prevention measures and infection control and they should have the opportunity for continuous professional development.

There are an estimated 180 million people worldwide who have a visual impairment. Out of that number, nearly 45 million are blind and four out of five of them live in developing countries. One-third of the world's blind people (15 million) and 50% of the world's blind children (0.7 million) live in the South-East Asia Region. Approximately 90% of all the cases of blindness in this region are avoidable. The present study was conducted in a tertiary health center, Pravara Rural Hospital of Rural Medical College Loni, Maharashtra, India, to examine the magnitude of preventable causes of blindness and to investigate the various causes responsible for blindness along with treatment offered. Out of 703 patients examined in the ophthalmology department in January 2011, 588 (83.6%) patients had avoidable blindness 525 from the outpatient department and 63 from the inpatient department. The Most common cause was cataract (60.95%), followed by refractive error (26%), whereas vitamin A deficiency and retinopathy were least common causes of avoidable blindness in our study. The baseline data presented by the present study about magnitude, causes and management of avoidable blindness will help to make 'Vision 2020' successful.