AIMS To evaluate the characteristics of manual haemoglobin methods in use in Malawi and provide evidence for the Ministry of Health in Malawi to enable them to choose a suitable method for district hospitals. METHODS Criteria on accuracy, clinical usefulness, user friendliness, speed, training time, and economic costs were determined by local health professionals and used to compare six diffe...

BACKGROUND The Ethiopian epidemic is currently on the wane. However, the situation for infected children is in some ways lagging behind due to low treatment coverage and deficient prevention of mother-to-child transmission. Too few studies have examined HIV infected children presenting to care in low-income countries in general. Considering the presence of local variations in the nature of the ...

BACKGROUND: For a health district to function referral from health centres to district hospitals is critical. In many developing countries referral systems perform well below expectations. Niger is not an exception in this matter. Beyond obvious problems of cost and access this study shows to what extent the behaviour of the health worker in its interaction with the patient can be a barrier of ...

BACKGROUND Case payment has been implemented since the beginning of Taiwan's National Health Insurance Program in 1995. This study selected patients undergoing a vaginal delivery to explore the relationships between maternal length of stay (LOS) and hospital characteristics under the case-payment system in Taiwan. METHODS The National Health Insurance Research Database of 1999 from Taiwan's N...

In Lao People's Democratic Republic (PDR), the mortality rate among children under 5 years of age is high (131 per 1000 live births in 2003), partly as a consequence of poor basic services provided by district hospitals. A simplified management tool, "Ten MR (Minimum Requirement)", was developed in Lao PDR. The tool assured the quality of health services including the processes of planning, imp...

For a long time now I have* noticed correspondence in the British Medical Journal under the heading ' Complacency in Anesthesia In England there is a fairly wide choice of anesthetics, from gas and oxygen, its combinations with ether % cyclopropane, ether and chloroform alone or mixed, to all the varieties of local, regional, and spinal anaesthesia, intravenous, tracheal, rectal and so on. In E...

Sir,?The article by Lieut-Colonel Cox in the August issue of the Indian Medical Gazette emphasizing the dangers of chloroform anaesthesia deserves "wide publicity in this country where the subject of anaesthetics and their administration appears to be badly neglected in the medical curriculum. Unlike many other highly necessary reforms, improvement in this branch of medicine does not necessitat...

Malaya achieved its independence in 1957; in 1963 it combined with Sabah, Sarawak, and Singapore (which seceded two years later) to form Malaysia. Today, Malaysia is a country in transition and thus has health problems ofboth undeveloped and developed countries. The main provider of health care in the country is the Ministry of Health through its extensive network of health centres, rural clini...

BACKGROUND An innovative, three-year training programme, the Bachelor of Clinical Medical Practice (BCMP), for mid-level medical healthcare workers was started in 2009 by the Department of Family Medicine, University of Pretoria. AIM To measure the students' perceptions of the instructional quality of district hospitalbased training. SETTING Training of students took place at clinical learn...