The first edition was published in the year 2006. It had a good initial response (or wide acceptance of readers) from the market apart from few lacunae which has been added in this second edition to make it more relevant and updated for undergraduate medical students. Designed primarily for undergraduate medical students, this edition includes an elaborate discussion on public health problems of Indian significance, namely, population overgrowth, human disasters, and emerging and re-emerging diseases.
It also provides detailed description of public health practices, namely, immunization, disinfection and sterilization, notification, isolation and quarantine, public health surveillance, and population screening. It lays adequate stress on applied aspects of preventive medicine and public health with focus on Indian situation. It contains well organized material which is free from repetition, confusion and uncertainty and which ensures availability of all the relevant information on a topic at one place. It has a unique style of narration that appeals to medical students because of its simplicity, lucidity, readability, retainability and enjoyability. It extends a managerial treatment to the description of health organizations, health programmes and health care systems of relevance to Indian situation. It incorporates a comprehensive coverage of physical, social and biological environments laying due stress on environmental pollution and its control. It presents a uniquely simplified and readily intelligible discourse on basic concepts of epidemiology and statistics which are usually abhorred by medical students. It incorporates a detailed description of national population policy and national health policy in consideration of their crucial importance in the formulation of national health care programmes for the country. It contains numerous comparison tables, flowcharts, graphs and diagrams to improve the comprehension and facilitate retention of the subject matter. It encloses multiple solved examples on epidemiology, vital statistics and basic statistics to enable the students to calculate rates, ratios and statistical values of applied significance. New to this Edition A new section on 'Public Health Problems' has been added that includes chapters on 'Population Problem in India and its Containment', 'Human Disasters and their Management' and 'Emerging and Re-emerging Diseases and their Behaviour'. A chapter on 'Adolescent Health Care' has been added to the section on 'Personal Health Care'. The chapter on 'National Health Programmes' has been reorganized into two chapters designated as 'National Health Programmes: Disease Oriented'; and 'National Health Programmes: Service Oriented'; both of them have been thoroughly updated. New programmes added to the chapter on disease-oriented National Health Programmes are 'Dengue and Chikungunya Fever Control'; 'National Programme for Prevention and Control of Diabetes'; 'Cardiovascular Disease and Stroke'; and 'National Programme for Prevention and Control of Deafness'. A sub-chapter on 'Indian Hospital System' has been added to the chapter on 'Health Care in the Indian Context'.
The sub-chapter includes discussion on hospital acquired infection and hospital waste management. A sub-chapter on 'National Rural Health Mission' has been included in the chapter on service-oriented National Health Programmes. A sub-chapter on 'Mental Disorders' has been included in the chapter on 'Natural History of Non-Communicable Diseases, Disorders and Accidents'. A sub-chapter on 'Vital Statistics' has been added to the chapter on 'Applied Statistics' to provide room for numerical examples in this area. Information on 'Millennium Development Goals' has been included in the chapter on Primary Health Care. Information on RCH-II has been added to the sub-chapter on this topic.
