The re-engineering of primary healthcare (PHC) is regarded as an essential precursor to the implementation of National Health Insurance in South Africa, but improvements in the provision of PHC services have been patchy. The authors contend that the role of well- functioning rural district hospitals as a hub from which PHC services can be most efficiently managed has been underestimated, and th...

A pilot project in a rural district of Tamil Nadu, India in which health is taught as a subject in primary schools by hospital-based staff is described.

Limited quality of childbirth care in sub-Saharan Africa primarily affects the poor. Greater quality is available in facilities providing advanced management of childbirth complications. We aimed to determine whether Maternity Waiting Homes (MWHs) may be a tool to improve access of lower socio-economic women to such facilities. Secondary analysis of a cross-sectional hospital survey from Iringa...

OBJECTIVES. To define the patient population at Cape Town's district-level hospital offering specialist tuberculosis (TB) services, concerning the noted increase in complex, sick HIV-TB co-infected patients requiring increased levels of care. METHODS. A cross-sectional study of all hospitalised adult patients in Brooklyn Chest Hospital (a district-level hospital offering specialist TB services)...

IRINA CAMELIA CHIŞ, DOINA BALTARU, ANCA DUMITROVICI, ANDREI COŞERIU, FLORINA VLAD, REMUS MOLDOVAN, ADRIANA MUREŞAN 1 Department of Physiology, “Iuliu Hatieganu” University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Clinicilor St., No. 1, Cluj district, Zip code 400023, Cluj-Napoca, Romania, [email protected] 2 “Constantin Papilian” Military Emergency Hospital, G-ral Traian Mosoiu Str., No. 22, Cluj district, Z...

BACKGROUND There is good evidence to support the use of a "protective" ventilation strategy, using small tidal volumes and inspiratory pressures, in patients with acute respiratory distress syndrome. Many general intensive care units in the UK are being slow to adopt this approach and we therefore set out to devise a method to audit ventilation and possibly influence practice in these units. ...

Surgical histopathology is learnt principally by the practical experience of reporting routine cases. This study performed a quantitative audit of the types of specimens reported by trainees at a teaching hospital and a district general hospital. At the teaching hospital all cases are seen by trainees and it was predicted that the distribution of specimens among trainees would be entirely rando...

To the Editor: The South African public health sector follows a hierarchical referral system. District hospitals play a central role between the primary health care (PHC) clinics, community health centres (CHCs), regional and tertiary hospitals. They provide level one (generalist) services to in-and outpatients referred from PHC clinics and CHCs. District hospitals should ensure that patients a...

o bjective: to explain an important  aspect of violence, the spatiotemporal pattern of trauma in victims of violence visited in emergency room of rajaei hospital, shiraz, iran m e thods: this cross-sectional prospective study comprised 109 randomly selected victims of violence visited in emergency room of rajaei hospital, a tertiary referral hospital affiliated to shiraz university of medical s...

BACKGROUND Bangladesh has achieved remarkable progress in healthcare with a steady decline in maternal and under-5 child mortality rates in efforts to achieve Millennium Development Goals 4 and 5. However, the mortality rates are still very high compared with high-income countries. The quality of healthcare needs improve to reduce mortality rates further. It is essential to investigate the curr...