On the occasion of WorldHeadandNeckCancerDay,HCG Oncology, organised a press meet in collaboration with Pink Hope Patient Support Group, to discuss the preventive aspects of cancer with a focus on head and neck cancers. The event was joined by Institute of Public Health India and cancer survivors to support the cause, who shared their stories of survival from cancer caused due to tobacco consumption.
Preventive public health measures such as larger pictorialwarnings on tobacco products was discussed and a petition to thank the government for implementing effective warnings was shared which has already reached around 9,000 supporters.
Faculty at Institute of Public Health, Bengaluru, India, Dr. Vijayashree H.Y, was interviewed by Healthcare Executive Magazine recently on spiralling health care cost in India.
The BMJ – Global Health journal has published a special supplement containing abstracts of all the poster and oral presentations made at the 3rd National Conference on Bringing Evidence into Public Health Policy EPHP 2016. In keeping with the spirit of EPHP of making evidence more available and more accessible the entire supplement is open access and all the abstracts can be viewed and downloaded at the following link http://gh.bmj.com/content/1/Suppl_1
Can Bengaluru Survive? Our priorities are all wrong :- IPH Staff quoted in The Times of India
Dr. Aneesha Ahluwalia, Training officer at IPH was quoted in Times of India and Bangalore Mirror. The article titled ‘Can Bengaluru survive?- our priorities all gone wrong’ was the third part in the series on Bengaluru’s indicators based on IISC report. The article focused on the social indicators and it’s relation with the sustainability of the city. Dr. Aneesha contributed towards the public health aspects especially the migration issue.
GOVT VS PRIVATE
Basic facilities in the city, Kurup said, are stretched out too thin because of unplanned growth. “Over the last two decades, Bengaluru’s economy has undergone a significant transformation, with service industry playing a major role in economic development.Our planning always comes after the problem and this is a dangerous approach,“ she says.
Health services have become expensive.Government services are not able to match the demand, nor are they efficient. So people are forced to look at private services. What planners need to look at is creating urban neighbourhoods beyond the city, so that people are not forced to migrate to Bengaluru for basic facilities, which the city anyway lacks, said Kurup.
Aneesha Ahluwalia, health expert from the city-based Institute of Public Health, pointed at a common concern for most cities: migration.“Bengaluru also faced such a sudden inflow of migrants due to the economic boom. The city grew tremendously in terms of population, but the infrastructure did not grow in the same proportion. The IISc report says that more than half of the population (58.7 per cent) lives in rented houses, indicating that a majority of them are not locals. The private sector on the other hand is highly unregulated, specially the private practitioners. There is no regulation on pricing or quality, among others,“ she said.
Dr Vijayashree Y, faculty and PhD scholar at Institute of Public Health, article titled ”Coping with tuberculosis and directly observed treatment: a qualitative study among patients from South India“, published in “BioMed Central” (BMC). This study carried out to explore the experience and consequences of having Tuberculosis on patients enrolled inDOTS and their caretakers in India.
Background
In India, the Revised National TB control programme (RNTCP) offers free diagnosis and treatment for tuberculosis (TB), based on the Directly Observed Treatment Short course (DOTS) strategy. We conducted a qualitative study to explore the experience and consequences of having TB on patients enrolled in DOTS and their caretakers in Tumkur district, located in a southern state of India, Karnataka.
Methods
We conducted 33 in-depth interviews on a purposive sample of TB patients from three groups: (1) patients who reached RNTCP directly on their own and took DOTS at RNTCP; (2) patients who were referred by private practitioners (PPs) to RNTCP and took DOTS at RNTCP; and (3) patients diagnosed by RNTCP and took DOTS from PPs. Data was analyzed using a thematic approach with the support of NVivo9.
Dr Vijayashree Y, faculty and PhD scholar at Institute of Public Health, article titled ” Determinants of sputum conversion at two months of treatment under National Tuberculosis Programme, South India “published in “International Journal of Medical Science and Public Health”, This study carried out in 2012 to investigate the reasons for low sputum conversion rate in Sira (among patients registered with RNTCP).
Background: In India, Revised National Tuberculosis (TB) control programme (RNTCP) offers free diagnosis and treatment for TB, based on the Directly Observed Treatment Short (DOTS) course strategy. Under RNTCP, sputum conversion rate (SCR), at the end of 2 months of treatment is an important operational indicator, which is ideally expected to be 90%.
Aim and Objectives: The objective of the present work was to investigate the factors associated with low SCR at the end of 2 months of treatment in Sira TB unit, Tumkur District, India.
Material and Methods: It is a retrospective cohort study of all new sputum smear-positive patients registered in RNTCP in 2011. Data were retrieved from the TB register maintained at the District TB center. Chi-square and Student’s t-test were used for analysis of the study variables between patients who were sputum positive and sputum negative at the end of 2 months of treatment. Multivariate logistic regression was applied to determine the risk contributed by the variables towards non-conversion of sputum.
