The shortage of adequate facilities and qualified staff at district and community level means that tertiary eye care services in Viet Nam have been overburdened by high volumes of patients, not all of whom needed tertiary-level care. In Quang Nam province, an additional challenge is the mountainous terrain, which makes travel very difficult. To help reduce the pressure on tertiary centres and i...

OBJECTIVE To determine differences in the incidence of epilepsy associated with deprivation. DESIGN Cross-sectional study of new cases of epilepsy presenting over 3 years linked to census based population and deprivation data. SETTING Norfolk UK. PATIENTS Children aged 29 days to 14 years presenting to the only district hospital serving the study area. INTERVENTIONS None. MAIN OUTCOME...

SETTINGS Partners In Health Rwanda, in collaboration with the Ministry of Health, leads a multipronged approach to develop research capacity among health workers, particularly in rural areas. OBJECTIVES To describe the characteristics of participants and to assess the impact of an introductory research seminar series in three district hospitals in rural Rwanda. DESIGN This was a retrospecti...

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...

An arts project was initiated at the newly rebuilt district hospital in the city of Exeter in south west England. This paper describes an independent research evaluation project covering the period from its inception in 1992. The findings include both qualitative and economic aspects and were compared with the authors' wider experience of similar projects. For the first time the responses of cl...

Two year (1998 and 1999) extensive survey was carried out in Mandya district hospital, Karnataka for a period of three years to monitor the prevalence of Staphylococcus aureus, Pseudomonas aeruginosa (S. aureus and Ps. aeruginosa) from the indoor air samples of operation theater labor room, children's ward, male and female general wards postoperative wards etc. A rotary air sampler loaded with ...