BACKGROUND Global health experts identify emergency obstetric care (EmOC) as the most important intervention to improve maternal survival in low- and middle-income countries. In Zambia, 1 in 27 women will die of maternal causes, yet the level of availability of EmOC is not known at the provincial level. AIMS Our goal was to develop a tool to measure the availability of EmOC in rural Zambia in...

BACKGROUND Administrative data are increasingly being used to assess outcomes in kidney transplant recipients. OBJECTIVE To assess the validity of transplant data in healthcare administrative databases compared to the reference standard of information collected directly from transplant centres. DESIGN Retrospective cohort study. SETTING One of three major transplant centres in Ontario (To...

The combined effects of increasing demand for health services and declining real public resources have recently led many governments in the developing world to explore various health financing alternatives. Faced with a significant decline during the 1980s in its real per capita expenditures, the Kenya Ministry of Health (MOH) introduced a new cost sharing programme in December 1989. The progra...

Oxygen therapy is essential in all wards, emergency departments and operating theatres of hospitals at all levels, and oxygen is life-saving. In Papua New Guinea (PNG), an effective oxygen system that improved the detection and treatment of hypoxaemia in provincial and district hospitals reduced death rates from pneumonia in children by as much as 35%. The methods for providing oxygen in PNG ar...

As the pressure to reduce the length of hospital stays increases, use of home care services is increasing1. As a result of health care reforms in the province of Ontario beginning in the mid-1990s, the setting for some health care services has shifted from the hospital to the home. Benefits of a home care system include reduced pressure on acute care facilities through expeditious discharge of ...

OBJECTIVE To compare partner notification practice and outcomes at a provincial and a metropolitan clinic. DESIGN Prospective study, following standardisation of partner notification policy. SETTINGS Sheffield Department of Genitourinary Medicine, Royal Hallamshire Hospital and Jefferiss Wing Centre for Sexual Health, St Mary's Hospital, London. SUBJECTS Consecutive patients with culture ...

Understanding the impact of treatment policies on patient outcomes is essential in improving all aspects of patient care. The BC Cancer Agency is a provincial program that provides cancer care on a population basis for 4.5 million residents. The Lung and Head & Neck Tumour Groups planned to create a generic yet comprehensive software infrastructure that could be used by all Tumour Groups: t...

BACKGROUND The cornerstone of the health system in Zimbabwe, the district health system has been under the responsibility of the district health executive since 1984. Preliminary information obtained from some provincial health managers in Midlands Province suggested a poor performance by most district health executives. We therefore investigated the reasons for this poor performance. METHODS...

In addition to establishing Canadian federal institutions for public health to work in cooperation with provincial and local health authorities, the infrastructure of public health for the future depends on a multi-disciplinary and well-prepared workforce. Traditionally, Canada trained its public health workforce in schools of public health (or hygiene), but in recent decades this has been carr...