Two hundred consecutive male cases of myocardial infarction have been treated along lines designed to provide a minimal time spent in bed, and in hospital, with early return to work. The method of treatment and the results are described. Rapid rehabilitation enabled 40 per cent to be discharged within a fortnight and 87 per cent within a month. Twenty-three per cent returned to work within 4 we...

Introduction It is often said that the majority of surgery in Africa occurs in cities because the surgeons prefer to live in the cities. This is certainly true in Malawi where all the country’s practising surgeons live in the four main towns. We have recently reported (1) on the low level of surgical activity in district hospitals despite several new district hospitals being built with multiple...

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 In order to measure and analyse the technical efficiency of district hospitals in Ghana, the specific objectives of this study were to (a) estimate the relative technical and scale efficiency of government, mission, private and quasi-government district hospitals in Ghana in 2005; (b) estimate the magnitudes of output increases and/or input reductions that would have been required to...

In the present study, a cross-sectional survey of intestinal parasitic and bacterial infections in relation to diarrhoea in Vhembe district and the antimicrobial susceptibility profiles of isolated bacterial pathogens was conducted. Stool samples were collected from 528 patients attending major public hospitals and 295 children attending two public primary schools and were analyzed by standard ...

To assess the quality of the leprosy service in health facilities from the clients' perspective, qualitative data collection methods, i.e. semi-structured interviews, focus group discussions (FGDs) and priority cards, were conducted in six health facilities located in all regions of Thailand. A total of 29 patients were interviewed and three focus group discussions involving 20 patients were ca...

Neonatal units in teaching and non-teaching hospitals both in public and private hospitals have been increasing in number in the country since the sixties. In 1994, a District Newborn Care Programme was introduced as a part of the Child Survival and Safe Motherhood Programme (CSSM) in 26 districts. Inpatient care of small and sick newborns in the public health system got a boost under National ...