Quality of management for acute respiratory tract infections and diarrhoeal diseases in rural Yemen.

To evaluate the performance of health workers with respect to diagnosis and treatment of acute respiratory infection (ARI) and acute diarrhoea (AD) in children < 5 years in 11 rural heath facilities in Yemen, we carried out a cross-sectional study on 219 cases of ARI and 93 cases of AD. Mean score for performance was 30.04 (range 21-39). The quality of care provided was fair in 89.4% and poor in 4.5% of cases. A "well done" performance of 6.3% was achieved by medical doctors but only 3.6% of medical assistants and 25% of medical assistants scored "poor" for performance, but only 2.5% of medical doctors. Health workers who had received training courses in ARI and AD performed slightly better than those who had not.