Lax Awareness Leads to Rise in Scrub Typhus Deaths in. Himachal Pradesh. The Times of India. 3 September, 2013,. 03:52 am IST. Available from: ...
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To conclude, positivity rate of 31% in the month of September points towards a possible endemicity of leptospirosis. Only routine testing with IgM ELISA and MAT similar to scrub typhus will give us the true picture of leptospirosis in this region. Physicians and Microbiologists need to test more to diagnose more of leptospirosis just like scrub typhus.
4. Lax Awareness Leads to Rise in Scrub Typhus Deaths in Himachal Pradesh. The Times of India. 3 September, 2013, 03:52 am IST. Available from: http://www.timesofindia. indiatimes.com/india/Lax-awareness-leads-to-rise-in-scrubtyphus-deaths-in-Himachal-Pradesh/articleshow/22241461. cms. [Last cited on 2015 Sep 20]. 5. Chauhan V, Mahesh DM, Panda P, Mokta J, Thakur S. Profile of patients of leptospirosis in sub-Himalayan region of North India. J Assoc Physicians India 2010;58:354-6.
Financial support and sponsorship
*V Chauhan, S Thakur
Nil.
Departments of Medicine (VC) and Microbiology (ST), Dr. RPGMC, Tanda, Kangra, Himachal Pradesh, India
Conflicts of interest
*Corresponding author (email: ) Received: 28-05-2015 Accepted: 18-01-2016
There are no conflicts of interest. References 1. Sethi S, Sharma N, Kakkar N, Taneja J, Chatterjee SS, Banga SS, et al. Increasing trends of leptospirosis in Northern India: A clinico-epidemiological study. PLoS Negl Trop Dis 2010;4:e579. 2. Mohanty S, Premlatha MM, Chaudhry R, Dey AB. Time to take leptospirosis seriously in India! J Assoc Physicians India 2003;51:929-30. 3. Kaur IR, Sachdeva R, Arora V, Talwar V. Preliminary survey of leptospirosis amongst febrile patients from urban slums of East Delhi. J Assoc Physicians India 2003;51:249-51.
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Awareness and practices regarding biomedical waste management among health-care workers in a tertiary care hospital in Delhi: Comment Dear Editor, We read with interest the article “Awareness and Practices Regarding Biomedical Waste Management Among Health‑Care Workers in a Tertiary Care Hospital in Delhi” by Bhagawati et al. in the current issue of the Indian Journal of Medical Microbiology.[1] We are surprised that they have failed to quote what is probably the largest and most comprehensive study on the subject “Biomedical Waste Management: Situational Analysis and Predictors of Performances in 25 Districts Across Twenty Indian States” published in the Indian Journal of Medical Research.[2] The authors have also not included labour staff in their survey. Although labour staff are not generally responsible for the generation of biomedical waste, they are responsible for its transport and are at high risk for contraction of This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License, which allows others to remix, tweak, and build upon the work non-commercially, as long as the author is credited and the new creations are licensed under the identical terms.
disease due to poor practices. Hence, the creation of awareness amongst them is also important. We agree that there is an urgent need for raising awareness regarding biomedical waste management among hospital staff. Educational modules regarding safe injection practices and biomedical waste disposal suitable for labour, paramedical, nursing and medical staff are available with the INCLEN office at Delhi and could be used with permission for training of various categories of personnel. Financial support and sponsorship Nil. Conflicts of interest There are no conflicts of interest. References 1. Bhagawati G, Nandwani S, Singhal S. Awareness and practices regarding bio‑medical waste management among
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health care workers in a tertiary care hospital in Delhi. Indian J Med Microbiol 2015;33:580‑2. 2. INCLEN Program Evaluation Network (IPEN) Study Group, New Delhi, India. Bio‑medical waste management: Situational analysis and predictors of performances in 25 districts across 20 Indian States. Indian J Med Res 2014;139:141‑53.
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*Corresponding author (email: ) Received: 02‑11‑2015 Accepted: 29-01-2016 Access this article online Quick Response Code:
*JJ David, P Shanbag
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Department of Pediatrics (JJD), Seth GS Medical College and KEM Hospital, Department of Pediatrics (PS), ESI‑PGIMSR and MGM Hospital, Parel, Mumbai, Maharashtra, India
DOI: 10.4103/0255-0857.188371
Predatory publisher and impact factor: The murky landscape of scholastic publication Dear Editor, The commentaries by Jain are invaluable for the readers of this widely circulated journal, more so for a fresher in the field of academic publication.[1] It will surely sensitise the stakeholders, involved in the process of scholarly publication, to the menace of predatory publishers and counterfeit impact factors (IFs). However, we feel that a glimpse of the other issues associated with them is also essential. Academic publication has experienced a paradigm transformation since the introduction of the concepts of open access publication (OAP) and non‑conventional peer review process. One cannot deny the unambiguous need of cost‑free availability of knowledge to every humankind. Even many ‘traditional publication houses’ have embraced the concept of OAP within their realm. However, recently, the model of OAP has seen its fair share of criticism. Publication of the ‘Lists of Predatory Publishers’ has garnered much discussion in both white and grey literature and social media.[1‑3]* The ‘sting operation’ by Bohannon, where he sent ‘credible but mundane scientific paper’ to many open access (OA) journals, pointed out that Beall credibly charted out the predatory journals.[2] Although this list may be of value in making an informed decision by everyone involved in generation and dissemination of scientific knowledge, we must remember that this list This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License, which allows others to remix, tweak, and build upon the work non-commercially, as long as the author is credited and the new creations are licensed under the identical terms. *Beall J. List of Predatory Publishers; 2014. In: Beall Scholarly Open Access. Feb 02, 2014. Available at: http://scholarlyoa.com/2014/01/02/list‑of‑predatory‑publishers‑ 2014/. [Last cited on Jun 14, 2015].
includes only OAP.[3] In fact, non‑OA journals have also published ‘non‑sense’ articles.[3] Moreover, the scepticism of Beall for OA model is noticeable.[3] It is in fact very interesting to read the viewpoints of both Beall and his criticisers.[2‑4] We think that referencing to both the sides of the coin will help the readers to form an informed decision. Although it is a daunting task, we definitely need to learn to distinguish the predatory from the legitimate OA journals. IF, provided by Journal Citation Reports®, is commonly used as an evaluative tool for a journal and may be one of the major deciding factors behind submission of research findings to a particular journal.[1,5] Such is the fascination with the IF that many spurious matrices have come into front, exploiting the need of having a legitimate looking scientometric/bibliometric indicator for journals with questionable publication ethics.[5] However, we must also note that because of certain inherent shortcomings of IF, other well‑accepted journal‑, author‑ and article‑based matrices have been developed.[5] Until all the collaborators engaged in scholarly publication accepts the pitfalls of IF and devise a unanimous evaluative tool, it may not be possible for many of us to resist the temptation to get published in a journal with high IF. However, we must recognise that the academic value of a journal should not be ascribed based only on its IF. The same is true for an article published in a journal with high IF. Financial support and sponsorship Nil. Conflicts of interest There are no conflicts of interest.
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