OBJECTIVE To investigate a possible association between level of care, antibiotic use and antimicrobial resistance in 16 public-sector hospitals providing different levels of care in KwaZulu-Natal. DESIGN A multicentre surveillance study was undertaken in 16 hospitals at three progressive levels of health care (district, regional, tertiary) where each hospital submitted 100 consecutive, non-r...

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...

OBJECTIVE To assess the unit cost of level II neonatal intensive care treatment delivered through public hospitals and its fiscal implications in India. DESIGN Cost analysis study. SETTINGS Four Special Care Newborn Units (SCNUs) in public sector district hospitals in three Indian states, i.e. Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Orissa, for the period 2010. METHODS Bottom-up economic costing method...

BACKGROUND Generation of resources for providing health care services is an important issue in developing countries. User charges in the form of Surgical Package Program (SPP) were introduced in all district hospitals of Haryana to address this problem. We evaluate the effect of this SPP program on surgical care utilization and out-of-pocket (OOP) expenditures. METHODS Data on 25437 surgeries...

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: there is an increasing trend of outsourcing public departments. teaching hospitals also outsourced some of their departments to private sectors. the aim of this study was to investigate and compare the educational status of students in public and outsourced departments of teaching hospitals affiliated to iran university of medical sciences.   methods: this study was conducted in six...

Noncommunicable diseases are a major healthcare problem in Nepal and their burden is increasingevery year. Noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) bring additional challenges to the Nepalese healthcaresystem which is already experiencing infrastructure shortages, poor service delivery, inadequate essential medicines coverage and shortages of healthcare workers. The Nepal government provides a limited n...