Abstracts presented at KACHCON by IPH

by iphindia | Feb 11, 2013 | Latest Updates

There were two oral presentations and two poster presentations from IPH in KACHCON 2012 held at Bagalkot from 3^rd to 4^th November 2012.

The first oral presentation investigated if Indian Public Health Standards (IPHS) have facilitated access to quality Emergency Obstetric Care (EmOC) in first referral units (FRUs) in Karnataka. The study concluded that there is an urgent need for dissemination of IPHS to district and block levels.

The second oral presentation was on why women resort to unsafe abortion services in Tumkur district of Karnataka.  The study recommended MTP training for doctors of all Primary Health Centres (PHCs) and effective Information Education and Communication (IEC) activities in respect of safe and legal abortion services.

The first poster presentation described the status of EmOC services in Tumkur district and the study adopted mixed methods. Study findings were that pregnant women in Sira do not have access to affordable and quality EmOC services. The recommendations are that maternal death audits be used for learning and not for blaming and making the gynaecologist exclusively available for EmOC services.

The second poster presentation looked into public awareness of and compliance to notified provisions of Cigarette and Tobacco Products Act (COTPA), 2003 in Karnataka. According to the results of the study awareness and compliance remain poor at district level

What is right, what is wrong?

by iphindia | Feb 6, 2013 | Latest Updates

A PHC in a remote corner of Karnataka. My colleague and I drive past dry forest and 50 km of non-existent road to reach this PHC. There is a crowd waiting in a nicely painted building. The young lady doctor is seeing the patients, one by one, in her chamber. Others patiently wait for their turn in the waiting hall. I casually flip through the OP register; she sees an average of 100 patients every day. All the details, including name and diagnosis are written legibly in the register. More important, it is obvious that she is present in the PHC every single day, barring the days for meetings.

She completes seeing a few patients, ensures that there are no serious patients in the waiting hall and then sits to talk to us. She listens to our requests and answers our questions patiently. She shares a recent experience when she went to the field for the polio mop-up visits. She saw a two week postnatal lying by the street in a makeshift hut. “The Golla community does not allow post-natals inside the house,” she explained. She then arranged to transfer this woman to the nearby hospital, so that the mother and baby get food at least. “The JSSK programme is a boon. At least we can look after such people.”

Our talk is interrupted by a phone call. A doctor informs her that the patient she has referred is better and will be discharged soon. She negotiates with the doctor to reduce the bill. “A case of incomplete abortion,” she explains. “I wish that I had some equipment and a Group D staff here. Then I could have managed it myself. And it would have cost the patient only 200 to 300 rupees. Just for the medicines. But because I do not have a group D who will sterilize the equipment and clean up the labour room after the procedure, I cannot do these simple procedures. I have to refer them out and they pay so much to the private sector.”

I ask about the 100 patients and the fact that she sees them one by one, not in a herd, as is the practice of most PHC medical officers. She explains that these are patients and need privacy and care. Yes it takes time and most of the days she is in the PHC from 10 to 5 pm. No, she does not stay in the PHC as there are no quarters. And her husband lives in the district headquarters and her child studies in a school in the district headquarters. So she commutes every day by driving in her own car. She explains that this way, she is not at the mercy of the bus (that plies just twice up and down) and can ensure that she sees all the patients before leaving.

My colleague and I leave the PHC wondering why there are not more such MOs. A few hundreds more and the health scene in Karnataka could change. It is obvious that she cares for her patients, cares for them enough to drive every day on bad roads for 180 minutes; cares for them enough to ensure that her PHC is well stocked with medicines, cares for them enough to make regular Anganwadi visits, house visits and school health visits. Does it matter that she takes Rs 10 from each patient, so that she can buy the fuel for her car? I don’t know; for me things are not so black and white anymore.

N Devadasan

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District health management course in Tumkur

by iphindia | Feb 6, 2013 | Latest Updates

The Institute of Public Health has renewed the district health management course in Tumkur; for those who did not complete the course earlier and for those who were transferred into the district after the original course was completed.

The course was held on 29^th and 30^th of January 2013 at Tumkur itself. There were 23 participants (out of 30) and all attended both the days. Of these 14 were district or taluk level health officers and the remaining 9 were BPMs from the taluks.

The main topic covered in the two days was monitoring using indicators. The reason for this was that it was observed that most of the taluk health officers use only numbers to monitor, which does not give a true sense of the performance of their taluks. In order to sharpen the monitoring, we taught them the skills of calculating an indicator and interpreting an indicator. This was done through a series of exercises using their own data.

At the end of the course, the District Health Officer visited and reinforced the message of using indicators to manage their taluk health services. A field assignment was also given to the participants; all of them were given the task of calculating maternal health indicators for their taluk and present it at the next PHC medical officers’ meeting.

The annual LINQED EC meeting

by iphindia | Jan 23, 2013 | Latest Updates

The annual LINQED EC meeting was held in IPH, India between 7^th -10^th January, 2013. The fifth annual workshop of the LINQED educational network will be held at the University of Pretoria,Pretoria, South Africa, from 27th till 30th May 2013.

To know more about  LINQED – Click here 

The main themes of the workshop are student assessment, thesis supervision and course design.

PhD seminar at IPH (18-Jan-2013)

by iphindia | Jan 10, 2013 | Latest Updates

Currently at IPH there are three PhD fellows.  Regular PhD seminars are held every month  to discuss the various aspects of research like study design, research methodology and provide with critical feedback to PhD students. This is open for all IPH staff and as well interested academicians from outside

Session-1

 Session-1

Session-2