BACKGROUND In Bihar State, proportion of fully immunized children was only 19% ;in Coverage Evaluation Survey of 2005. In October 2007, a special campaign called Muskaan Ek Abhiyan (The Smile Campaign) was launched under National Rural Health Mission to give a fillip to the immunization program. OBJECTIVES To evaluate improvement in the performance and coverage of the Routine Immunization Pro...

AIM The aim was to assess the seroprevalence of B. abortus and Leptospira hardjo in the cattle population of Bihar, this work was carried out. MATERIALS AND METHODS Randomly selected 450 cattle from nine districts of Bihar were serologically screened for antibodies against L. hardjo and B. abortus. DAS-ELISA for leptospira and AB-ELISA for brucella were carried out. Based on the results preva...

Information on inoculum load and diversity of native microbial community is an important prerequisite for crop management of microbial origin. Azospirillum has a proven role in benefiting the maize (Zea mays) crop in terms of nutrient (nitrogen) supply as well as plant growth enhancement. Bihar state has highest average national maize productivity although fertilizer consumption is minimum, ind...

OBJECTIVES To investigate the DDT and deltamethrin susceptibility of Phlebotomus argentipes, the vector of Leishmania donovani, responsible for visceral leishmaniasis (VL), in two countries (India and Nepal) with different histories of insecticide exposure. METHODS Standard WHO testing procedures were applied using 4% DDT and 0.05% deltamethrin impregnated papers. The effect of the physiologi...

The visceral form is the most deadly form of the leishmaniasis family, which affects poor and developing countries. The Indian state of Bihar has the highest prevalence and mortality rate due to visceral leishmaniasis in the world, where it is also referred to as Kala-Azar. Insecticide spraying is the current vector control procedure for controlling its spread in Bihar. This study proposes a no...

BACKGROUND & OBJECTIVES Morbidity is self reported at a higher rate among the rich than the poor. However, objective measures suggest the contrary. We examined the role of epidemiological transition in wealth related inequalities in self-reported morbidity (SRM). METHODS We analyzed data of two States, Bihar and Kerala, from 60 [th] Round of National Sample Survey (NSS). Bivariate analysis wa...

This article provides a theory-based, step-by-step approach to intervention development and illustrates its application in India to design an intervention to promote tobacco-use cessation among school personnel in Bihar. We employed a five-step approach to develop the intervention using the Social Contextual Model of Health Behavior Change (SCM) in Bihar, which involved conducting formative res...

Background Good economic growth is considered synonymous with good nutrition. In recent past, some states (like Bihar and Gujarat) have seen unprecedented economic growth. Despite this and introducing plethora of programs (including integrated child development scheme [ICDS]) to reduce malnutrition, one state might be performing well in reducing malnutrition whereas other with equally high econ...

the extent of groundwater arsenic (as) contamination and associated health-risks were studiedin the four villages: chaukia and terahrasiya (vaishali); mamalkha and masharu (bhagalpur) in bihar, india.groundwater samples were tested using the standard silverdiethyledithiocarbamate method at 520nm bythermo uv-1 spectrophotometer. the as levels in both the districts exceeded the who standard of 10...

OBJECTIVES Bihar, the poorest state in India, concentrates most of the visceral leishmaniasis (VL) cases in the country. A large proportion of the poor rural communities where VL is endemic are marginalized by their socio-economic status, intrinsically related to the caste system. In this study, we evaluated whether people from low socio-economic strata had difficulties accessing VL treatment i...