No abstract
Health/Medical tourism is a booming niche tourism market in the tourism industry. The main reason for the increasing trend is the high cost of treatment, long waiting time, less insurance coverage in developed countries and the attitude of people to spend holidays in a quality manner with the aim of improving health. In India, Kerala is emerging as a prime health tourism hub for its Ayurveda packages. The state attracts millions of foreign and domestic tourists to visit the state's incredible heritage and experience the traditional nature based treatment therapies. The volume of tourist arrivals in Kerala had experienced a stupendous growth of 7.7 per cent in 2014 from 4.3 per cent in 2001 (Annual report of Tourism Statistics, Department of Tourism, Government of Kerala). This study aims to profile the tourists visiting Kerala for Ayurvedic treatment and to identify the destination image factors making Kerala an attractive place for Ayurveda health tourism. For this purpose, 150 domestic tourists availing Ayurvedic treatment in Kerala were selected on the convenience of the researcher. In order to analyse the objectives, the Descriptive Statistics, Factor Analysis and One-way ANOVA were employed and the results revealed that service quality, attraction, opportunity, benefits and promotion were the destination image factors making Kerala an attractive place for Ayurvedic Health Tourism. The present study identifies the strength of Kerala for Ayurveda health tourism which helps the destination managers and the service providers with a better understanding of the market for elevating Kerala and its Ayurveda in this niche market.
Objective: To evaluate the in vitro antifungal susceptibility of Malassezia spp isolated from PV cases against three commonly used antifungal agents, ketoconazole, itraconazole and fluconazole.
Background: Malassezia spp are accounted for approximately 60-90% of the total cutaneous fungal micro biota. An enhanced understanding of the distribution of Malassezia spp in healthy individuals is necessary to gain insight to involvement of these species in human skin disorders particularly in pityriasis versicolor. The aim of this study was to assess the Malassezia micro flora of healthy individuals and to identify species variation with different body sites, gender and age groups.Methods: A total of 120 apparently healthy men and 120 women without any skin diseases or who were not treated for Malassezia associated skin diseases were selected for the study. The specimens consisted of scrapings collected from chest, back and neck from each control subject totaling 720 sites.Results: The recovery rate of Malassezia was positive in case of 452 (62.78%) of 720 sites sampled, while the remaining 268 (37.22%) were found to be negative. Recovery rate of Malassezia was highest in chest with 83.33% positive cases, followed by the back with 73.33% and the neck 31.67%. M. globosa was identified as the common species (46.46%) followed by M. furfur (25%) and M. restricta (22.56%). No significant difference was present (P > 0.05) in distribution of species with different body sites, gender and age groups.Conclusions: The overall colonization rate of Malassezia spp in normal healthy individuals found in this study was 62.78%. M. globosa was identified as the common species (46.46%).
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