Contribution of veterinary sector to antimicrobial resistance in One Health compendium: an insight from available Indian evidence.

The application of antibiotics in the poultry and veterinary sectors is very common practice in India. Owing to the seriousness of antimicrobial resistance (AMR), the present study has illustrated the overall scenario of AMR in the poultry and veterinary sectors in India through an in-depth scoping review and key informant interview (KII). In the poultry sector, most of the studies reviewed have reported resistant bacteria isolated from chicken meat, eggs, cloacal swabs, and fecal samples, and only a few have reported the presence of resistant bacteria in and around the environment of poultry farms. The major resistant bacteria that have been reported are E. coli, Salmonella spp., S. aureus, Campylobacter jejuni, and K. pneumoniae. These bacterial isolates exhibited resistance to various antibiotics, such as azithromycin (21.43%), tetracycline (11.30-100%), chloramphenicol (4.76-100%), erythromycin (75-83.33%), ciprofloxacin (5.7-100%), gentamicin (17-100%), amikacin (4.76%), cotrimoxazole (42.2-60%), trimethoprim (89.4%), ceftriaxone (80%), and cefotaxime (14.29-70%). Like the poultry sector, different antibiotics are also used for treating clinical and subclinical bovine mastitis, which is one of the major problems plaguing the dairy sector. Several AMR bacterial strains, such as E. coli, Staphylococcus aureus, S. epidermidis, and Klebsiella pneumoniae, have been reported by many researchers and showed resistance against tetracycline (74%), oxytetracycline (47.37%), ciprofloxacin (51%), streptomycin (57.89%), cephalosporin (100%), and trimethoprim (70%). The KIIs have revealed several reasons behind these AMR scenarios, of which the growing need for the production of food animals and their products with inadequate infrastructure and a lack of proper knowledge on farm management among the farmers are the major ones. Though several government legislations and policies have been laid down, proper implementation of these policies, strict surveillance on antibiotic application in the poultry and veterinary sectors, awareness generation among farmers, and infrastructure development can help minimize the development and transmission of AMR bacteria within and from these sectors.

Response to antimicrobial resistance in South-East Asia Region.

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) inflicts significant mortality, morbidity and economic loss in the 11 countries in the WHO South-East Asia Region (SEAR). With technical assistance and advocacy from WHO, all countries have developed their respective National Action Plans on AMR that are aligned with the Global Action Plan. Historically, the WHO Regional Office has been proactive in advocacy at the highest political level. The past decade has seen an enhancement of the country's capacity to combat AMR through national efforts catalyzed and supported through several WHO initiatives at all levels-global, regional and country levels. Several countries including Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Thailand have observed a worrying trend of increasing drug resistance, despite heightened awareness and actions. Recent AMR data generated by the countries are indicative of fragmented progress. Lack of technical capacity, financial resources, weak regulatory apparatus, slow behavioural changes at all levels of the antimicrobial stewardship landscape and the COVID-19 pandemic have prevented the effective application of several interventions to minimize the impact of AMR.

One Health based joint surveillance for AMR containment at district and national level in India: A conceptual model.

Antimicrobial resistance cuts across different sectors mainly human health, animal health and environment. Joint surveillance for existence and spread of antimicrobial resistance is critical for mounting efficient interventions for its containment. Maximum interaction between these sectors takes place in rural areas with abundant animal population. In India, these areas are administratively covered under a comprehensive unit called District headed by an administrator called as Collector or Deputy Commissioner. The existing structure provides an effective platform to undertake well-coordinated multisectoral joint surveillance to generate reliable and actionable data at the local level. A conceptual model has been proposed for possible implementation at the district and national levels in India.

Cancer Detection Based on Medical Image Analysis with the Help of Machine Learning and Deep Learning Techniques: A Systematic Literature Review.

BACKGROUND: Cancer is a deadly disease. It is crucial to diagnose cancer in its early stages. This can be done with medical imaging. Medical imaging helps us scan and view internal organs. The analysis of these images is a very important task in the identification and classification of cancer. Over the past years, the occurrence of cancer has been increasing, so has been the load on the medical fraternity. Fortunately, with the growth of Artificial Intelligence in the past decade, many tools and techniques have emerged which may help doctors in the analysis of medical images. METHODOLOGY: This is a systematic study covering various tools and techniques used for medical image analysis in the field of cancer detection. It focuses on machine learning and deep learning technologies, their performances, and their shortcomings. Also, the various types of imaging techniques and the different datasets used have been discussed extensively. This work also discusses the various preprocessing techniques that have been performed on medical images for better classification. RESULTS: A total of 270 studies from 5 different publications and 5 different conferences have been included and compared on the above-cited parameters. CONCLUSION: Recommendations for future work have been given towards the end.

Scholarly knowledge graphs through structuring scholarly communication: a review.

The necessity for scholarly knowledge mining and management has grown significantly as academic literature and its linkages to authors produce enormously. Information extraction, ontology matching, and accessing academic components with relations have become more critical than ever. Therefore, with the advancement of scientific literature, scholarly knowledge graphs have become critical to various applications where semantics can impart meanings to concepts. The objective of study is to report a literature review regarding knowledge graph construction, refinement and utilization in scholarly domain. Based on scholarly literature, the study presents a complete assessment of current state-of-the-art techniques. We presented an analytical methodology to investigate the existing status of scholarly knowledge graphs (SKG) by structuring scholarly communication. This review paper investigates the field of applying machine learning, rule-based learning, and natural language processing tools and approaches to construct SKG. It further presents the review of knowledge graph utilization and refinement to provide a view of current research efforts. In addition, we offer existing applications and challenges across the board in construction, refinement and utilization collectively. This research will help to identify frontier trends of SKG which will motivate future researchers to carry forward their work.

Existing Policies/Guidelines on the Environmental Dimension of Antimicrobial Resistance in India: An Insight into the Key Facets through Review and SWOT Analysis.

BACKGROUND: Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a multidimensional phenomenon. The environment acts as a mixing pot of drug-resistant bacteria from many sources such as pharmaceutical, biomedical, veterinary, and agricultural sectors. In this study, we analysed the existing AMR-related policies/guidelines/legislations in India in the above domains and how the current practices are being guided by them. METHODS: We used a convergent parallel mix method design. Quantitative data were collected through a review of policies/guidelines/legislations in the said domains and analysed using the SWOT tool parallelly supported by key informant interviews of domain-specific stakeholders. RESULTS: Altogether, 19 existing AMR policies/guidelines/legislations were identified. The existence of few policies/guidelines in each domain indicated the evolving environment for policy interventions. However, the lack of capacity among farmers, inadequate provision for structured capacity building, high cost of alternatives to antimicrobials, and lack of provision of incentivisation in case of crop failure were identified as the major weaknesses prevalent across the domains. Opportunities for policy refinements/the introduction of new policies are ample. However, easy access to antimicrobials and injudicious use imposes threats to AMR containment in all sectors. CONCLUSIONS: Despite having a few policies for the containment of AMR, their implementation witnesses challenge due to the lack of collaborative approaches, the existence of policies disjointed from ground reality, infrastructural issues, and the lack of capacity and resources.

Predictors of COVID-19 Vaccine Confidence: Findings from Slums of Four Major Metro Cities of India.

There are limited studies on COVID vaccine confidence at the household level in urban slums, which are at high risk of COVID-19 transmission due to overcrowding and poor living conditions. The objective was to understand the reasons influencing COVID-19 vaccine confidence, in terms of barriers and enablers faced by communities in urban slums and informal settlements in four major metro cities in India. A mixed method approach was adopted, where in field studies were conducted during April-May 2021. First, a survey of at least 50 subjects was conducted among residents of informal urban settlements who had not taken any dose of the COVID-19 vaccine in Mumbai, Bengaluru, Kolkata and Delhi; second, a short interview with five subjects who had taken at least one dose of the vaccine in each of the four cities to understand the factors that contributed to positive behaviour and, finally, an in-depth interview of at least 3 key informants in each city to ascertain the vaccination pattern in the communities. The reasons were grouped under contextual, individual/group and vaccine/vaccination specific issues. The most frequent reason (27.7%) was the uncertainty of getting the vaccine. The findings show the need for increasing effectiveness of awareness campaigns, accessibility and the convenience of vaccination, especially among vulnerable groups, to increase the uptake.