INTRODUCTION Repeat HIV testing during the late antenatal period is crucial to identify and initiate treatment for pregnant women with incident HIV infection to prevent perinatal HIV transmission and keep mothers alive. In 2012, the Kenya Ministry of Health adopted international guidelines suggesting that pregnant women be offered retesting three months after an initial negative HIV test. Our o...

This study examined the magnitude and time trends in failure to return (FTR) rates and the relation between FTR and individual characteristics, tests procedures, waiting period for the results, and HIV test results among people who were screened for HIV in the prevention and voluntary testing and counseling centers (PVTCCs) of six district hospitals of the city of Douala in Cameroon, between Ja...

BACKGROUND Telemedicine services are considered essential for improving the accessibility, quality and efficiency of the healthcare services in developing countries. With these expectations, government of Nepal has implemented a rural-telemedicine program in thirty peripheral district hospitals to improve the accessibility of specialist health services. Telemedicine can be appropriate to the na...

PROBLEM In the 1970s, Thailand was a low-income country with poor health indicators and low health service coverage. The local health infrastructure was especially weak. APPROACH In the 1980s, measures were initiated to reduce geographical barriers to health service access, improve the health infrastructure at the district level, make essential medicines more widely available and develop a co...

Studies performed in developed countries have shown that infections by third generation cephalosporin resistant Escherichia coli (G3CREC) are associated with increased mortality, but data from developing countries are scarce. In this observational study, we collected clinical and microbiological information of 194 patients admitted to a district hospital in India who had community-acquired isol...

BACKGROUND In 2004, the Malawian Ministry of Health declared a human resource crisis and launched a six year Emergency Human Resources Programme. This included salary supplements for key health workers and a tripling of doctors in training. By 2010, the number of medical graduates had doubled and significantly more doctors were working in rural district hospitals. Yet there has been little rese...

BACKGROUND Clinical laboratories are crucial in addressing the high rates of communicable and non-communicable diseases seen in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). However, the most basic information, such as the number and quality of clinical laboratories in SSA, is not available. The objective of this study was to create a practical method for obtaining this information in SSA towns and cities using an...