BACKGROUND In developing countries such as Papua New Guinea (PNG), district hospitals play a vital role in clinical care, training health-care workers, implementing immunization and other public health programmes and providing necessary data on disease burdens and outcomes. Pneumonia and neonatal conditions are a major cause of child admission and death in hospitals throughout PNG. Oxygen thera...

Of the hospitals that participated in the study, 22 (81.5%) were district level, 3 (11.1%) regional and 2 (7.4%) central hospitals. All 27 hospitals had a defibrillator present in the EC, the number varying from 1 (16 hospitals, 59.3%) to more than 3 (1 hospital, 3.7%). Defibrillator specification varied between facilities: 67% had biphasic, 15% monophasic and 18% both monoand biphasic defibril...

BACKGROUND Airborne infections pose a serious threat to susceptible individuals whenever they are together in confined spaces with patients coughing up tuberculosis (TB) bacilli. In healthcare facilities, those with infectious TB should, as far as possible, be isolated from non-infectious patients in order to prevent exposure to the infectious droplet nuclei generated by infected patients. AI...

BACKGROUND Surgery is increasingly recognized as an important driver for health systems strengthening, especially in developing countries. To facilitate quality improvement initiatives, baseline knowledge of capacity for surgical, anaesthetic, emergency and obstetric care is critical. In partnership with the Malawi Ministry of Health, we quantified government hospitals' surgical capacity throug...

PURPOSE To document the quality of training and experience of those who care for patients undergoing surgery and emergency obstetrical procedures at 10 government district hospitals in Ghana. METHOD A study team composed of Ghanaian and U.S. surgeons visited 10 district hospitals in 10 different regions of Ghana in August 2009. On-site interviews were conducted documenting the formal and info...

BACKGROUND Surgical conditions contribute significantly to the disease burden in sub-Saharan Africa. Yet there is an apparent neglect of surgical care as a public health intervention to counter this burden. There is increasing enthusiasm to reverse this trend, by promoting essential surgical services at the district hospital, the first point of contact for critical conditions for rural populati...

Acute poisoning is a common medical emergency in Malaysia. Life can be saved if the patient is diagnosed properly and receives the appropriate treatment such as gastrointestinal decontamination techniques and resources to increase poison elimination according to clinical guidelines at a reasonable time. The aims of this study were to determine the availability of decontamination, elimination en...

BACKGROUND There are conflicting reports of antiretroviral therapy (ART) effectiveness comparisons between primary healthcare (PHC) facilities and hospitals in low-income settings. This comparison has not been evaluated on a broad scale in South Africa. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS A retrospective cohort study was conducted including ART-naïve adults from 59 facilities in four provinces in ...

BACKGROUND The impact of surgical conditions on global health, particularly on vulnerable populations, is gaining recognition. However, only 3.5% of the 234.2 million cases per year of major surgery are performed in countries where the world's poorest third reside, such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). METHODS Data on the availability of anesthesia and surgical services were gat...