India has been a victim of the gender bias since ages. The Government of India, by putting a lot of impetus on the education of the girls is trying to overcome this gender bias yet the literacy gap between the boys and the girls has not reduced substantially. One of the factors responsible for the low literacy rate of the females is the parent and the girl child relationship. In light of the above, the paper attempts to explore the impact of the parent child relationship on the education of girls at primary level in Delhi.
OBJECTIVES: The Children's Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF) in partnership with the Government of Rajasthan seeks to reduce prevalence of low birthweight through multi-faceted interventions to strengthen existing delivery of services during pregnancy continuing into early childhood. We employed a quasi-experimental matched case design with matching at district, block, and sub-center level to enable a difference-in-difference estimation of impact of the interventions at endline. METHODS: We conducted a retrospective baseline survey of mothers with children under three years in 2018 to assess prevalence of low birthweight in six districts of Rajasthan. Primary household survey data was collected on 8583 mothers with children under the age of three years and 2406 currently pregnant women. Birthweight records of 5702 children under three years were collected from public facilities where the children were reported to be delivered by the mothers surveyed. RESULTS: Matching facility birthweight records of children born to mothers in the sample confirmed heaping of data, consistent with studies from developing countries that rely on administrative or secondary sources of birthweight records. We observed heaping of birthweight readings around multiples of 500 gms; 23% of the new-borns weighed 2.5 kgs and 19% weighed 3 kgs. Possible reasons for misreporting include malfunctioning or mis calibrated spring scales, manual data entry errors in the labor room registers, poor knowledge of optimal weighing practices and misclassification of low birthweight new-borns as normal birthweight. CONCLUSIONS: Concerns with reliance on facility records for the key impact indicator have highlighted the need for standardisation of birthweight measurement at public delivery facilities. All public delivery facilities in the evaluation's treatment and control areas will receive digital weighing scales in labor rooms, along with training and mentoring of labor room staff based on a standardised protocol. This has implications for endline ...
OBJECTIVES: Responding to pandemics is challenging in pluralistic health systems. This study assesses COVID-19 knowledge and case management of informal providers (IPs), trained practitioners of Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homeopathy (AYUSH) and Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS) medical doctors providing primary care services in rural Bihar, India. DESIGN: This was a cross-sectional study of primary care providers conducted via telephone between 1 and 15 July 2020. SETTING: Primary care providers from 224 villages in 34 districts across Bihar, India. PARTICIPANTS: 452 IPs, 57 AYUSH practitioners and 38 doctors (including 23 government doctors) were interviewed from a census of 1138 primary care providers used by community members that could be reached by telephone. PRIMARY OUTCOME MEASURE(S): Providers were interviewed using a structured questionnaire with choice-based answers to gather information on (1) change in patient care seeking, (2) source of COVID-19 information, (3) knowledge on COVID-19 spread, symptoms and methods for prevention and (4) clinical management of COVID-19. RESULTS: During the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, 72% of providers reported a decrease in patient visits. Most IPs and other private primary care providers reported receiving no COVID-19 related engagement with government or civil society agencies. For them, the principal source of COVID-19 information was television and newspapers. IPs had reasonably good knowledge of typical COVID-19 symptoms and prevention, and at levels similar to doctors. However, there was low stated compliance among IPs (16%) and qualified primary care providers (15% of MBBS doctors and 12% of AYUSH practitioners) with all WHO recommended management practices for suspect COVID-19 cases. Nearly half of IPs and other providers intended to treat COVID-19 suspects without referral. CONCLUSIONS: Poor management practices of COVID-19 suspects by rural primary care providers weakens government pandemic control efforts. ...
