OBJECTIVE To determine the national distribution of intensive care unit (ICU)/high care (HC) beds and the implications for ICU bed availability in the envisaged national health insurance (NHI) scheme. METHODS A descriptive, non-interventional, observational study design was used. A desk-top audit of all public and private sector ICUs, including ICU/HC beds, in South Africa was undertaken for ...

Coral reefs and seagrass beds are often located adjacent to one another, but little is known about the degree to which their fish communities are interlinked. To determine whether coral reef fishes on the coral reef are interlinked with or segregated from fishes on adjacent seagrass beds, a 60 m coral reef–seagrass gradient was studied on the island of Zanzibar in the western Indian Ocean. Usin...

Life time smoking of ready made cigarettes can be readily quantified as "pack years" smoked, but methods for measuring loose tobacco use are less well established. In this study the frequency of loose tobacco use by 247 hospital in-patients was determined; 64% were current or ex-smokers, 41.3% of whom (25.9% of participants) had smoked loose tobacco. A formula was developed for converting loose...

We selected four hospitals which draw their patients from urban and rural districts in the Stoke-on-Trent area, and which differ in size and character from the Birmingham hospital. Brief particulars of these institutions are as follows: (i) City General Hospital, Newcastle-under-Lyme (formerly the London Road Institution). A general hospital with 915 beds distributed thus: Beds for the acute si...