Blogs

Medical Record Linkage
• Record linkage means bringing together information that relates to the same individual or family, from different data sources. In this way it is possible to construct chronological sequences of health events for individuals
• The records may originate in different time or places.
• Medical record linkage implies the gathering and maintenance of one file for each individual in a population, with records relating to his/her health.
• The events commonly recorded are
– birth, marriage, death,
– hospital admission and discharge

List of Notifiable diseases in India
Note: the list is not comprehensive as an official list could not be found
1. AIDS
2. Dengue fever
3. Hepatitis B
4. Malaria
5. Whooping cough (Pertussis)
6. Rabies
7. Tetanus
8. Viral encephalitis
9. Anemia
10. Chickenpox
11. Diphtheria
12. Influenza
13. Measles
14. Plague
15. Smallpox
16. Tuberculosis
17. Malnutrition
18. Iodine deficiency
19. Cholera
20. Hepatitis A
21. Leprosy
22. Cerebro spinal fever

Notification of Diseases
1. Disease notification is a practice of reporting the occurrence of a specific disease or health-related condition to the appropriate and designated authority.
2. A notifiable disease is any disease that is required by law to be reported to government authorities.
3. Effective notification allows the authorities to monitor the disease, and provides early warning of possible outbreaks

The civil registration system in India has a lot to be improved and would require a huge effort and time. A need for having an alternate source of such information was felt. The Government of India, in the late 1960s, initiated the Sample Registration System (SRS).
SRS aims to provide reliable estimates of birth and death rates for the States and also at All India level. Following features of SRS ensure the completeness of vital events reporting:
1. A representative sample of the population is covered and NOT the WHOLE population

Unlike Census, ‘’Registration of vital events’’ maintains a continuous record of demographic trends.
Definition (UN): ‘legal registration, statistical recording and reporting of the occurrence of and the collection, compilation, presentation, analysis and distribution of statistics pertaining to vital events’
Vital events include:
a. Live births
b. Deaths
c. Fetal deaths
d. Marriage
e. Divorce
f. Adoptions
g. Legitimations
h. Recognitions
i. Annulments and
j. Legal separations

Definition of Census (UN): ‘The total process of collecting, compiling and publishing demographic, economic and social data pertaining at a specified time or times, to ALL persons in a country or delimited territory’.
It is massive undertaking to contact every member of the population in a given time and collect a variety of information
It needs
• Massive preparation and
• Several years to analyze the results after census is taken
• This is the main problem of census as a data source i.e. that the results are not available quickly
Census in India

Health Information System (HIS)
For lecture on HIS click the link below:
http://www.ihatepsm.com/resource/health-information-system-his

For video lecture on this topic click below:
http://www.ihatepsm.com/resource/measures-central-tendency-and-dispersion

The term “average” implies a value, around which the other values are distributed in the given sample.
Commonly used averages are:
The ‘Mean’
The ‘Median’ and
The ‘Mode’

1. The first prof is generally very stressful for new MBBS entrants. The three main subjects are demanding enough.
a. Hence expecting them to study Community Medicine also is too much in general. Some strong personalities can do it; they are encouraged to start from 1st prof itself.
b. Others are advised to at least attend the lectures and try to grasp what is being taught.
2. Start studying from 2nd prof itself. Find half to one hour a day from your studies for the subject

HILL’S CRITERIA
(Blog contribution by: Pragyan Paramita Parija)

Guidelines for judging whether an observed association is causal:
1. Temporal relationship
2. Strength of the association
3. Dose – response relationship/ Biological gradient
4. Replication of the findings
5. Biologic plausibility
6. Consideration of alternate explanations
7. Cessation of exposure
8. Consistency with other knowledge
9. Specificity of the association
10. Analogy