INTRODUCTIONInjection is a skin piercing procedure performed with a syringe and needle to introduce a substance for prophylactic, curative or recreational purposes. Injection is one of the most common health care interventions globally.1 It is estimated that globally 16 billion injections are administered each year. The majority (90%-95%) of these injections are administered for curative purposes.Prophylactic injections (Immunization) accounts for around 5% of all injections.2 Estimates suggest that at least 50% of the world's injections administered each year are unsafe, particularly in developing countries. A majority of curative injections have been judged to be unnecessary, ineffective or inappropriate.3 Also in some countries of South-East Asia the proportion of unsafe injections is 75%. 4 Unsafe injections can transmit bacterial, viral and parasitic (malaria) infections. 5ABSTRACT Background: Estimates suggest that at least 50% of the world's injections administered each year are unsafe, particularly in developing countries. Unsafe injection practices put patients and healthcare providers at risk of infectious and non-infectious adverse events, sound knowledge of healthcare providers is vital to break the chain of blood borne diseases transmission caused by unsafe injection practices. Methods: Cross sectional observational questionnaire based study was carried out amongst 152 injection providers of 40 healthcare facilities of two districts of Kashmir valley (one rural and one urban) selected purposively. Results are summarised and presented in the form of tables and chi (x 2 ) test was used for test of association with statistical significance set at p-value of less than 0.05. Results: In this study out of 152 injection providers, majority (81.57%) were in the age range of 21-40 years and 74.3% were females. 43.4% of the participants were FMPHWs, 30.9% were nurses and 13.8% pharmacists. Overall 65.8% and 67.1% of injection providers had correct knowledge regarding WHO definition of safe injection and infections transmitted by unsafe injections respectively. Majority (90.8%) were aware about the biomedical waste management rules. Conclusions: We conclude that over all the knowledge of different aspects of injection safety was good among the participants except the poor knowledge ofpost exposure prophylaxis and disposal of injection related waste despite the use of color coded bags at the sites of waste generation.

Typhoid fever (or enteric fever) remains a deadly disease in developing countries, particularly in India. Although, the paediatric population is mainly affected by this disease, however, the disease is one of the main causes of morbidity and mortality in adult populations as well. Typhoid fever is an orally transmitted infectious disease caused by the Gram negative bacterium, Salmonella typhi. The aim of the study was to examine pathogens that cause typhoid fever among healthy people in the Doda region of Jammu and Kashmir, India. Blood was collected from 150 healthy people for testing. A total of 85 (56.7%) healthy people showed positive results that they had typhoid fever based on a clinical examination and serological test, while 65 (43.3%) showed negative results of the total of 150 patients. The Widal test was found to be suitable test for enteric fever. Typhoid fever remains common in the Doda region, even among those with a high level of education. The study conducted during March 2020 to May 2020, is the first of its kind in the Doda region of Jammu and Kashmir.

Background: Cigarette smoking, in the developed world, has been the major habit among children for both boys and girls. They usually take to the habit while in school before the age of 18. In India, tobacco consumption in multiple forms presents an emerging, significant and growing threat to the health of the adolescents. As per  WHO Global Youth tobacco Survey GYTS (2009) India, 14.6% of students currently use any form of tobacco, 4.4%currently smoke cigarettes, 12.5% currently use some other form of tobacco. Objective was to assess the knowledge, attitude and practice of school going adolescents regarding smoking.Methods: A descriptive cross sectional study was taken in school going adolescents of Kashmir. The study included three districts from Kashmir valley and from each district, 2 government middle schools (1 girls and 1 boys), 2 government high schools (1 girls and 1 boys), 2 government higher secondary schools (1 girls and 1 boys) were selected. Also from the list of private schools one middle school, one high school and one higher secondary school (All  having co-education) were selected. Thus, a total of 27 schools, 9 from each selected district, were included in the study. A total of 1000 students participated in this study.Results: The current study included 464 males (46.4%) and 536 (53.6%) females. Among the study subjects, 523 (52.30%) belonged to the 12-15 year age bracket and 477 (47.70%) were between 16-18 years of age. Maximum of study participants belonged to nuclear family (63.10%) followed by joint family (36.90%). Majority of the study subjects belonged to socio-economic class IV (lower middle) 36.10% followed by class III (middle) 23.90% as per Modified BG Prasad’s classification.Conclusions: 75.9% opined that smoking tobacco is harmful to health in comparison to 89.1% of non-smokers, a difference found to be statistically highly significant (p value <0.001). Prevention of tobacco use in young people and the consumption of tobacco, among school students should be considered as a matter of great concern which requires holistic understanding.

Let D be a digraph of order n with adjacency matrix A(D). For α ∈ [0, 1), the A α matrix of D is defined asIn this paper, we find the singular values of some basic digraphs and characterize the digraphs D with Rank (A α (D)) = 1. As an application of these results, we obtain a lower bound for the trace norm of A α matrix of digraphs and determine the extremal digraphs. In particular, we determine the oriented trees for which the trace norm of A α matrix attains minimum. We obtain a lower bound for the α spectral norm σ 1α (D) of digraphs and characterize the extremal digraphs. As an application of this result, we obtain an upper bound for the α trace norm of digraphs and characterize the extremal digraphs.

No abstract