Survey
We conducted an awareness survey in the online format as an evaluation and informative tool. We were able to gather nearly 250 responses, which helped us evaluate how to educate people regarding Urinary Tract Infections and propagate our solution to the locals. Dr. Blessy, our Institute’s Chief Medical Officer, helped us shape our survey to get the most accurate responses suitable for our analysis.
This survey was useful in creating our flyers, which was curated with the help of our institute’s Jigyansa team. These flyers were spread throughout our institute as well as the villages we visited. This survey helped us and the villagers comprehend the urgency with which we needed to address the question of the diagnosis of Urinary Tract Infections. Based on the survey, we received the following statistics:
- Out of the 202 people who answered the survey, 108 were males and 94 were females.
- 89.3% of the respondents were aware of what Urinary Tract Infections are.
- 91.6% of the respondents believed that UTIs are treatable, while 7.9% believed that UTIs are not completely treatable.
- 91.1% of the respondents believed that females were affected more than males.
We received the statistics that out of all the uropathogenic bacteria that cause UTIs, 42.6% of the infections were caused by E. coli. Results from isolated urine samples showed that 90.3% of the infections caused were due to Gram Negative Bacteria.
Village
We extended our awareness program to four villages local to the Permanent campus, IISER Berhampur. With the help of our friend from BS-MS 2020, Usha Kiran Sahoo and our team member Sandesh Katakam, we were able to successfully conduct this survey by breaking language barriers and communicating in Odia, Telugu and Hindi. The following villages were under this initiative:
The following villages were under this initiative:
- Laudigam
- Keluapalli
- Kirtipur
- Solabindha
We learnt that :
- None of the villages that we visited had a public washroom.
- Each house had one washroom, which was used by nearly 4-6 people.
- This Washroom was cleaned every 3-4 days.
- Urinary Tract Infections are more common during summer, with nearly 9-10 people having experienced it in April 2022.
- People assume that UTIs are caused due to dehydration - they drink a lot of water and ignore the symptoms post this.
- This has led to a higher number of kidney infections in Laudigaum this summer.
- Local doctors, near Laudigaum, are not giving specialized antibiotics to treat UTIs. A common set of medicines including general antibiotics and paracetamol are given for all medical problems.
- It was reported by the villages authority that there is a sharp rise in the kidney-related medical conditions among the village population.
- There was a stigma associated with the urinary tract information among the locals, most were very shy to answer to survey questions honestly.
Figure: Our visit to the village of Keluapalli
Figure: Flyer
Talk by Dr. Blessy, Dr. Anjana
Dr. Blessy conducted a talk on Basics and Clinical Aspects of UTI, in collaboration with our team, and held it in the offline mode. Dr. Blessy extended her advice in the improvement of the surveys we had planned to publicise and helped us understand the interactions between virulence factors and the uroepithelium. She advised us about the sensitivity of the survey and aided us in revising and updating the questionnaire to suit the mindsets of people.
Dr. Anjana introduced us to the strong link between Diabetes and UTI. Her expertise in the field of Diabetes has helped us focus on how diabetic medications can trigger urinary tract infections and how kidney abscesses can also be traced back to UTIs. She also instructed on the importance of asymptomatic UTIs and how to trace and track them. Her advice has helped us shape how we approach diabetics regarding our project and how to modify our questions when we reach out to diabetologists for a statistical perspective.
Epidemiological Modeling
In collaboration with the members of the modeling team, we helped generate a world heat map that depicted the incidence and mortality rates of Urinary Tract Infections, normalized to the population of each country. This work involved manually adding the incidence and corresponding death rates for nearly 177 countries and then normalizing them with the total population index. The information for these charts and visualization graphs were obtained from the Global Burden of Disease, from the year 2019.
This website also provided the incidence and mortality rates of UTIs in India from 1990 to 2019, and provided charts for the same. This data and the map have helped us immensely while pitching and portraying our project to investors, sponsors and the public forum. In addition, on our visit to the local diagnostic and research lab, Nidan, we came across data involving children below the age of 5 to have a startlingly higher number of cases. This also helped us reform our target populations to include toddlers and babies.
During our pitch to our Institute’s director, Dr. K. V. R. Chary, epidemiological modeling had helped us highlight the importance of our project in the local areas, via the survey, as well as portray the global significance of our solution. In addition, presentation in the Startup Odisha 2.0 Program, these graphs had helped us emphasize on the empathetic nature with which we would have to address this issue and allowed us to put across the key point of how countries in underdeveloped or developing continents still face a staggeringly huge number of cases and deaths primarily related to Urinary Tract Infections.
Talk on Women’s Health - Dr. Indira Palo
(Asst. Prof. OBGYN)
We have collaborated with IIT Roorkee, IISER Tirupati, IISER Mohali and IISER Trivandrum to conduct a women health talk series, conducted in an online format on October 1 and 2.
We-Talk is a collaborative event organised by four iGEM teams from across IISER Tirupati, IISER Thiruvananthapuram, IISER Berhampur and IIT Roorkee.
It was a collaborative 3-day event highlighting conversations centred around women’s health issues. Featuring an informational array of talks, interviews, a panel discussion, and an exciting quiz!
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1st October, 2022
Interview with Dr. Manjiri Bakre, CEO and Founder of OncoStem Diagnostics
11:00 AM -12:00 PM IST
-
1st October, 2022
Quiz: Let's celebrate Women in STEM
12:00 PM - 1:00 PM IST
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2nd October, 2022
Topic: Menstrual Hygiene and Challenges in Adolescent Girls
Talk: Dr. Indira Palo, Gynecologist & Obstetrician Doctor
10:00 AM - 11:00 AM IST
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2nd October, 2022
Topic: Cervical Cancer & Breast Cancer
Talk: Dr Prerna Lakhwani, Senior Gynecologic Oncologist
5:00 PM - 6:00 PM IST
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3nd October, 2022
Panel discussion: A round-robin among collaborators
3:00 PM - 4:00 PM IST
Synthetic Biology
Furthermore, IISER Berhampur and IISER Trivandrum joined together to spread awareness awareness about synbio in their local schools using fun games and activities which would entertain the young minds while also educating them about various topics such genetic engineering and GMOs.
Discussion with experts
Our research and our efforts in bringing up a user-friendly solution are important but are valued several times more when the real world deems it necessary and useful. Wide-spread awareness on the importance of our project is highly critical in order to assign significance based on the demography of concern. Since we intend to help women, people from the economically weaker sections and patients with uncontrolled diabetes in particular, we requested for advice and guidance from experts in the fields of diabetics, aptamer designing and women’s health.
Dr. K. V. R. Chary (Director, IISER
Berhampur)
Dr. K.V.R. Chary, our honorable director, has provided us with instrumental advice regarding our laboratory procedures and the outlook of our project to the local masses. He asked us to get a perspective from the rural populations local to Brahmapur, Odisha and prompted us to carry forward with this project post iGEM by pushing to build public toilets in these villages. It was due to his guidance that we were able to conduct an awareness initiative in villages near our campus to understand the frequency of usage and cleaning in these washrooms. He was also instrumental in our registration for Grand Jamboree and we are extremely grateful for his consistent support for our research and our project.
Dr. Blessymol Varghese (Chief Medical Officer,
IISER
Berhampur)
Dr. Blessy extended her advice in the improvement of the surveys we had planned to publicise and helped us understand the interactions between virulence factors and the uroepithelium. She advised us about the sensitivity of the survey and aided us in revising and updating the questionnaire to suit the mindsets of people. Dr. Blessy also helped us spread the awareness regarding UTIs by offering to conduct a talk in the offline mode in our institute.
Dr. R M Anjana (Managing Director of Dr.
Mohan’s Diabetes
Specialities Centre and Vice President of Madras Diabetes Research
Foundation)
Dr. Anjana introduced us to the strong link between Diabetes and UTI. Her expertise in the field of Diabetes has helped us focus on how diabetic medications can trigger urinary tract infections and how kidney abscesses can also be traced back to UTIs. She also instructed on the importance of asymptomatic UTIs and how to trace and track them. Her advice has helped us shape how we approach diabetics regarding our project and how to modify our questions when we reach out to diabetologists for a statistical perspective.
Dr. Swapnil Sinha (Founder of Altanostics Pvt.
Ltd.)
We were given the great opportunity to converse with Dr. Swapnil Sinha, the founder of Altanostics Pvt. Ltd. She is an expert in working with aptamers and their selection by SELEX. It was a very enlightening experience and we would truly love to interact with her in the future aspects of our project.
Dr. Narendra Chirmule (Founder-director of
SymphonyTech Biologics)
We had a telephonic conversation with Dr. Narendra Chirmule, founder-director of SymphonyTech Biologics. He was also the Head of R&D of Biocon Research Labs, Bangalore. He was extremely enthusiastic to hear about our project and advised us to look into Intellectual Property Rights for the further development and industrial scale-up of our prototype. He extended his support and prompted us to reach out to him in case we encounter any speed bump in the course of the project.
Dr. Vasan Sambandamurthy (Senior Vice-President,
Global Operations, Bugworks)
Dr. Vasan was instrumental in reforming our perspective and pitch of the project. He took the time to shape our responses to questions commonly asked by judges and interviewers and also shared contacts who could help us go further in the project.
