Background: Sleep is the state, in which the organism temporarily, partially and periodically loses its interaction with surroundings at different intensities and which can be reversed with stimuli. Sleep deficiency in sleep is linked with many physical ailments. The present study was aimed at assessing the sleep quality of patients attending the outpatient department of a rural health centre in Kacheepuram, Tamilnadu.Methods: A cross sectional study was conducted amongst patients attending the OPD of rural health center of a Medical College Hospital at Kancheepuram. A pretested semi structured questionnaire based on Pittsburgh sleep quality index (PSQI) was used to collect data. Data were entered on and analyzed using Microsoft excel spread sheet.Results: Of the 150 participants who participated in the study 87 (58%) were males and 63 (42%) were females. In the present study there were 80 participants (53.3%) under the age of 40 years and 70 participants (46.7%) over the age of 40 years. Of the 150 participants 85.3% of them had a sleeping time <8 hrs a day and a minority of them 14.7% had a sleeping time of >8 hrs a day. The sleep quality of females was slightly better (54%) when compared to males. It was also observed that only 10 (9.7%) of the skilled workers had good quality of sleep when compared to unskilled workers.Conclusions: Our present study shows, the prevalence of poor-quality sleep was 31.3%. Various factors like gender, occupation and education were found to positively associated with poor quality sleep.

25.3 million people have died of AIDS-related illnesses. Around 2 million people became newly infected with HIV in 2014 and 1.2 million people died from AIDSrelated causes worldwide. 1 India has the third highest number of estimated people living with HIV in the world. According to the HIV Estimations 2012, the estimated ABSTRACT Background: AIDS is one among the complex health problems of today's world, in the year 2014 there were 36.9 million people living with HIV. Since 2000, around 38.1 million people have become infected with HIV and 25.3 million people have died of AIDS-related illnesses. India has the third highest number of estimated people living with HIV in the world. Though the overall trend of HIV in India shows a declining trend, the HIV infected cases among adolescent age group in India is on the rise. The aim is to assess the knowledge regarding HIV/AIDS among engineering students and to assess the attitude of students towards people infected with HIV/AIDS. Methods: Cross sectional study done among 500 college students from an engineering college in Nellore district from August 2015 to September 2015. The selection of study subjects was done using convenience sampling. After consenting, each participant answered a questionnaire comprising of questions pertaining to awareness and attitude of people toward PLHA. Results: About 54% of the participants were aware that HIV can spread through body fluids such as blood, semen/vaginal fluid and breast milk and 58% knew that HIV can spread by having sex with an infected partner. About 37% of the students answered that they would not sit next to a HIV infected person on a bus and 59% of the students responded that they would divorce their spouse if they happen to know that (he/she) is infected. Conclusions: Though the study population is aware of the disease HIV/AIDS, complete knowledge about the disease, its modes of spread and protective measures is not satisfactory. It is observed that stigmatization and tendency to discriminate people living with HIV/AIDS is still present and there is no complete acceptance of positive cases by the study subjects.

Background: Voice disorders cause undesirable effects on school teachers such as reducing their quality of life, decrease in work performance affecting the quality of education, job absenteeism, and reduced social activities as well. Methodology: Voice disorder among teachers was assessed through the “Voice handicap Index”, which was developed by Jacobson et al in 1997 to self-assess the severity of voice disorder in dysphonia patients Results: The overall prevalence of voice disorder among government school teachers was found to be 46.5% with a 95% confidence interval from 41.5% to 51.5%. Using Backward Wald, the binary logistic regression analysis showed that female teachers (AOR 1.6, p<0.01*), teaching experience less than 10 years (AOR 2.4, p<0.01*), and teaching hours more than 21 hours per week (AOR 6.7, p<0.01*) had a significant association with voice disorders. Conclusion: The prevalence of voice disorder was found to be high since teachers are professional voice users. The study also recommends that teachers must receive the required health education on the ergonomic risk factors that they will come into contact with in their daily lives as part of their jobs.

Background: Stress related to work is a complex process that influences both the worker's health and his productivity. Identification of the stressors may elicit psychological, behavioural or physical response in the work environment. Methods: A descriptive cross sectional study was conducted in a single thermal power unit located in Tamilnadu state. A standard and validated questionnaire by O'Donnell MP, was used to assess the occupational and nonoccupational stress. Results: A total of 126 participants were included in the study. Psychological stress was the most common form of stress reported by 32.5% of the subjects. The prevalence of occupational stress was 9.5% in study population. Physical stress and family stress were reported by 13.5% and 12.7% of the subjects respectively. The highest odds of stress were observed in 30 to 39-year age group, when compared to youngest age group (20 to 29 years). Strong positive association was observed between the psychological stress and hypertension in study population. Conclusions: Psychological stress was the most common form of stress reported in industrial workers. Male gender, middle age groups, current use of smoking or alcohol is strongly associated with occupational stress.