Unlike other complicated epidemic, Malaria is a disease which is not unheard of among people of all

social classes and a riveting connection can be analyzed between people’s socio-economic background
and the extent of awareness about the causes, symptoms and approach to treatments of Malaria. Malaria is
an age old disease and hence the awareness. Correct knowledge about the disease is affiliated to people’s
occupation, worksite and certain socio-economic factors. As far as people’s socio-economic backgrounds
are concerned people from rural areas tend to resort to traditional herbal methods of treatment or even to
the extent of supernatural treatments of tantrics which is due lack of education and religious beliefs.
Migrant people are more prone to Malaria because of their workplace and occupation of daily labour.
Most often they tend to resort to self-treatment or misinterpretation of symptoms and consuming
commonly available tablets for fever and cold without consulting doctors. This trend is associated with
lack of money and proper medical facilities for the poor and marginalized. The use of mosquito repellent
and coils seem to be prevalent in urban and semi-urban localities due to awareness through media and
newspapers, while in rural places people tend to use mosquito nets during winter and autumn and burning
egg cartons during summer which is another traditional method of treatment through age old practice.
Poor living conditions and poor health seeking behavior of people from lower socio-economic strata seem
to be more prone to Malaria. Researchers believe that through proper awareness campaigns, efficient
investment on infrastructure development of primary health centers and lower cost of medical facilities
can reduce the effect of Malaria especially among the poor and marginalized.

Keywords East Delhi – KAP – malaria incidence – socioeconomic conditions – treatment practices

Tyagi, P., Roy, A., & Malhotra, M. S. (2005). Knowledge, awareness and practices towards malaria in communities
of rural, semi-rural and bordering areas of east Delhi (India). Journal of vector borne diseases, 42(1), 30.

India is among the top ten most malnourished populated countries in the world an a research team in
Varanasi tries to find out the difficulties in recognizing various indicators of detecting malnourishment.
There are certain issues including lack of proper knowledge by practitioners and lack of proper
equipment’s. A methodology of anthropometry ( weight, height and mid upper arm circumference)
MUAC measurements help in finding out the children actually suffering from malnutrition. Lack of
proper living facilities among the poor make them more vulnerable and hence calls for more cost effective
means of conducting malnutrition checkups in such areas. There is a need and scope to construct an
alternative indicator to provide a single, aggregated figure of the number of undernourished children in a
population. Typical measures of under nutrition may be missing out a considerable proportion of
undernourished children present in the population. Based on various indices of medical analysis effective
health promotion and nutritional interventional programmes can be formulated.

Keywords Children – underweight – nutrition – anthropometric – malnutrition – MUAC

Anwar, F., Gupta, M. K., Prabha, C., & Srivastava, R. K. (2013). Malnutrition among rural Indian children: An
assessment using web of indices. Int J Public Health Epidemiol, 2, 78-84.