In 2006 and 2007, a large outbreak of Clostridium difficile infections (CDIs) with PCR-ribotype 027 was identified in northern France. Overall, 38 healthcare facilities notified 529 CDIs over a 22-month period, including 281 laboratory-confirmed CDI 027 and 248 non-confirmed CDI 027 cases (incidence rate per 10,000 elective bed days: 1.63, range: 0.07 to 7.94). The cases occurred mainly in long...

BACKGROUND Healthcare facility construction is increasing because of population demand and the need to replace ageing infrastructure. Research suggests that there may be a relationship between healthcare environment and patient care. To date, most evaluations of new healthcare facilities are derived from techniques used in other industries and focus on physical, financial and architectural perf...

Providing long distance truck drivers with adequate access to prevention, testing, and treatment services for HIV, Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs), Tuberculosis (TB), and Malaria is suggested to be an extremely effective way to reduce the burden and the spread of these diseases. However, truck drivers need to overcome large barriers in order to obtain these services at the traditional he...

Community surveys of healthcare-use determine the proportion of illness episodes not captured by health facility-based surveillance, the methodology used most commonly to estimate the burden of disease in Africa. A cross-sectional survey of households with children aged less than five years was conducted in 35 of 686 census enumeration areas in rural Bondo district, western Kenya. Healthcare so...

Clinicians and hospital administrators rely on healthcare information systems (HIS) for decisionmaking. Typically, HIS need to aggregate data from a network of geographically dispersed healthcare facilities and specialized departments of medical practice. However interoperability issues in the data arise from the diversity of infrastructure, specialized practices, underlying systems, procedures...

BACKGROUND Current assessments on Output-Based Aid (OBA) programs have paid limited attention to the experiences and perceptions of the healthcare providers and facility managers. This study examines the knowledge, attitudes, and experiences of healthcare providers and facility managers in the Kenya reproductive health output-based approach voucher program. METHODS A total of 69 in-depth inte...

BACKGROUND Youth-friendly health services are a key strategy for improving young people's health. This is the first study investigating provision of the Youth Friendly Services programme in South Africa since the national Department of Health took over its management in 2006. In a rural area of South Africa, we aimed to describe the characteristics of the publicly-funded primary healthcare faci...

OBJECTIVES To investigate the heterogeneous transmission patterns of Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) in the Republic of Korea, with a particular focus on epidemiological characteristics of superspreaders. DESIGN Retrospective epidemiological analysis. SETTING Multiple healthcare facilities of secondary and tertiary care centres in an urban setting. PARTICIPANTS A total of 185 labo...

BACKGROUND Globally, there are increasing efforts to improve maternal health outcomes including the reduction in maternal mortality rates. Improved access to skilled care utilisation during pregnancy and delivery has been one of the strategies employed to improve maternal health outcomes. In Kenya, more than half of the women deliver without the assistance of a skilled attendant and this has co...