Indian journal of public health
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Indian J Public Health · Jun 2020
Knowledge, attitude, and practices related to COVID-19 pandemic among social media users in J&K, India.
A series of measures have been suggested to reduce Covid-19 infection, including knowledge training for prevention and control, isolation, disinfection, classified protections at different degrees in infection areas, and protection of confirmed cases. ⋯ Our study showed that the respondents have exhibited good knowledge, positive attitude and sensible practices regarding covid-19 during the pandemic.
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The whole globe is reeling under the COVID-19 pandemic now. With the scale and severity of infection, number of deaths and lack of any definite therapeutic armamentarium, the vaccine development has been accelerated at a never-before pace. A wide variety of vaccine technologies and platforms are being attempted. ⋯ While the availability of newer technologies has facilitated development, there are several challenges on the way including limited understanding of the pathophysiology, targeting humoral or mucosal immunity, lack of suitable animal model, poor success of human severe acute respiratory syndrome/Middle East Respiratory Syndrome vaccines, limited efficacy of influenza vaccines, and immune exaggeration with animal coronavirus vaccines. With the current scenario with political, funding, research, and regulatory supports, if everything sails through smoothly, the successful vaccine is expected in 12-18 months. Modestly efficacious vaccine may be also a good achievement.
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Indian J Public Health · Jun 2020
Distribution and growth rate of COVID-19 outbreak in Tamil Nadu: A log-linear regression approach.
Most of the countries are affected with the pandemic outbreak of the coronavirus infection. Understanding the severity and distribution in various regions will help in planning the controlling measures. ⋯ The results indicate that the outbreak is showing decay in the number of infections of the disease which highlights the effectiveness of controlling measures.
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Indian J Public Health · Jun 2020
Assessing health systems' responsiveness in tackling COVID-19 pandemic.
Health systems' responsiveness is the key to addressing infectious disease threats such as pandemics. The article outlines an assessment of health systems based on World Health Organization's building blocks for select countries. It also compares these with the findings from a more comprehensive analysis of Global Health Security (GHS) Index, which assesses the preparedness of the health system for such pandemics. ⋯ Overall, it appears that Asian countries could fight the battle better than most developed nations in the Europe and America during the current pandemic, despite having poor GHS scores. Experiences of these countries in facing similar crisis in the past probably sensitized their strained health systems for a greater good. There are several lessons to be learned from such countries.
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There is a lot of discussion on COVID-19 control strategies from the mainstream approaches, but it is also necessary to examine the contributions of the Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha, Sowa Riga and Homeopathy (AYUSH) sector, which is now being brought into public health interventions nationally. Although the AYUSH sector had previously joined the management of dengue and chikungunya outbreaks in some Indian states, its participation has remained contentious and there is reluctance in mainstream public health discourses to seriously examine their interventions. This is a commentary on the efforts made by the Ministry of AYUSH, state AYUSH directorates, AYUSH research institutions, and public hospitals, based on official documents as well as official statements reported in the media, with the aim of bringing out concerns in the process of adapting traditional textual knowledge and practices to public health requirements of the current age.