Background: Hand hygiene remains the most cost effective strategy in prevention of health care associated infections as it may limit or completely stop the transmission of microorganisms. Poor hand hygiene practices, especially of the mothers of under five children are likely to pose a major threat to the health of their children. The present study aimed to assess the knowledge, attitude and practices of under-five mothers visiting an outpatient department in a tertiary teaching care hospital in North India.Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted among 330 mothers who were attending with their under five children in paediatrics OPD of Government Medical College, Jammu. A self-administered questionnaire which was pilot tested was administered to the consenting mothers. The questionnaire consisted of socio demographic information followed by knowledge, attitudes and practices of the respondents about hand washing.Results: Knowledge about spread of disease was excellent among the respondents. Other knowledge parameters like responsibility of mother to ensure proper hand washing among children and long nails can spread bacteria were better among the urban mothers (p<0.05). Similarly attitudes of the urban mothers were found to be more favourable especially about towel sharing and teaching children about proper hand washing (p<0.05). Practices like usage of soap and water after defecation were found to be excellent among both the urban and rural respondents. However higher proportion of urban females reminded their children about hand washing before and after eating (p<0.05).Conclusions: The study results reveal a better knowledge, attitude and practices among urban mothers in comparison to their rural counterparts. This necessitates community awareness generation regarding hand hygiene, more so in rural mothers, so that many communicable diseases which could be transmitted by improper hand hygiene are taken care of.

Background: The growing concern about antibiotic resistance, of late, led World Health Organization to declare it as World Health Day theme in 2011. Knowledge spreads awareness and understanding by melting the barriers of ignorance while attitudes and practices have a bearing on the health related behaviour. The present study aims at evaluating the knowledge, attitudes and practices of medical students towards antibiotic usage.Methods: The present cross-sectional study was conducted among the Pre-final medical students (6th / 7th semester) who participated in the questionnaire survey on knowledge, attitude and practice towards antibiotics usage. The data was analysed and Chi-square was used as test of significance.Results: Overall, 132 students were interviewed. Majority (96.2%) had heard of antibiotic resistance. About 22% of the sample stated that antibiotics can cure viral infections, among them female being in the higher proportion (p<0.05). Majority (>90%) agreed that antibiotic resistance is a serious problem and had positive attitude about population awareness campaign regarding antibiotic resistance. Among practices, higher proportion of male respondents preferred antibiotics in case of cough and sore throat. (p<0.05).Conclusions: Despite being Pre-final MBBS students, the results have revealed that knowledge and attitude of the respondents were not up to the desired levels. The practices regarding use of antibiotics were more or less adequate. For effective curriculum, thorough knowledge and rational prescription of antibiotics needs to be reinforced among medical students both before and during internship.

Introduction:Iodine deficiency disorder remains one of the major public health problems, despite it being easily preventable. Initially thought as the disorder of Himalayan goiter belt, the disorder has been found to have a pan-India presence. The study was planned with the aim to assess the prevalence of goiter among 6–12 years school-going children and to identify levels of iodine in salt consumed at the household level in the study area.Materials and Methods:The study was conducted among 3955 school-going (2162 children from Rajouri and 1793 children from Poonch) children age 6–12 years in Rajouri and Poonch districts of Jammu Province. The children were examined clinically to detect and grade the goiter. Salt samples were collected from subsample (n = 400) to estimate iodine content in the salt.Results:The prevalence of goiter in the study population was found to be 18.87% and 9.70% in Rajouri and Poonch districts, respectively. Goiter prevalence was higher in 9–12 years age group as compared to 6–9 years age group and the difference in goiter prevalence in males of these two age groups was statistically significant (P = 0.02). Estimation of iodine content of the salt samples revealed that all of them (100%) had adequate iodine content.Conclusion:Despite the implementation of Universal Iodization Program and adequate content of iodine in salt consumed by the families, the goiter prevalence in both the districts is high. The future research should focus on identifying the reasons for this high prevalence.

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