All healthcare facilities must have a plan for the protection of all persons on their premises and for their evacuation from the building in case of fire. Written copies of this plan must be available to all supervisory personnel. All employees must periodically trained and informed of their duties in implementing the plan. All beds must be easily movable should evacuation be necessary. Emphasi...

BACKGROUND Radiation, which is used extensively to diagnose and treat human diseases, poses an occupational health risk for the concerned health workers. Personal dosimetry is an important tool to monitor occupational radiation exposures. OBJECTIVE This study was conducted to reveal and to describe the situation of occupational radiation exposure monitoring among staffs in different health ca...

BACKGROUND The population of Ghana is increasingly becoming urbanized with about 70 % of the estimated 26.9 million people living in urban and peri-urban areas. Nonetheless, eight out of the ten regions in Ghana remain predominantly rural where only 32.1 % of the national health sector workforce works. Doctor-patient ratio in a predominantly rural region is about 1:18,257 compared to 1:4,099 in...

BACKGROUND Dropout from an outpatient clinic is the loss of a patient to scheduled follow-up. Due to movement of mental health care to the community, adherence to ambulatory care is crucial to maintain stability among individuals with mental disorders. We hypothesized that patients drop out from ambulatory psychiatric care when regardless of the therapist's evaluation, they feel that they have ...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate quality of routine and emergency intrapartum and postnatal care using a health facility assessment, and to estimate "effective coverage" of skilled attendance in Brong Ahafo, Ghana. METHODS We conducted an assessment of all 86 health facilities in seven districts in Brong Ahafo. Using performance of key signal functions and the availability of relevant drugs, equipment a...

1 Using chemical sterilants and high-level disinfectants in health care facilities The update of the Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation American National Standard Chemical sterilization and high-level disinfection in health care facilities, ANSI/AAMI ST58:2013, is available for purchase and should become part of health care facilities’ evidence-based library. Below is a ...

Measles transmission occurs readily in health care facilities such as general practices and hospitals. It can not only lead to measles in other patients at the facilities but also to measles in medical and nursing staff. In the recent (1999) measles outbreak in Victoria, four of the 62 cases were health care workers. 1 A further obvious concern in health care facilities is that those exposed ma...

BACKGROUND Providing health care services in Africa is hampered by severe scarcity of personnel, medical supplies and financial funds. Consequently, managers of health care institutions are called to measure and improve the efficiency of their facilities in order to provide the best possible services with their resources. However, very little is known about the efficiency of health care facilit...

OBJECTIVE To assess the resources for essential and emergency surgical care in the Gambia. METHODS The World Health Organization's Tool for Situation Analysis to Assess Emergency and Essential Surgical Care was distributed to health-care managers in facilities throughout the country. The survey was completed by 65 health facilities - one tertiary referral hospital, 7 district/general hospital...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the impact of a performance-based financing scheme on maternal and neonatal health service quality in Malawi. METHODS We conducted a non-randomized controlled before and after study to evaluate the effects of district- and facility-level performance incentives for health workers and management teams. We assessed changes in the facilities' essential drug stocks, equipment...