A cost effective small hospital in Bangladesh: what it can mean for emergency obstetric care

Mortality has improved dramatically in most of South Asia as a consequence of modest economic improvement, better nutrition and a combination of health education, immunization, family planning and home treatment of certain common diseases, especially diarrhea and respiratory infections. However, death rates are still much higher than in parts of the world with fully developed health services and residual mortality is largely due to conditions which require very basic hospital services such as surgery for complications of pregnancy, infections and trauma, transfusion, intravenous fluids, oxygen and intensive antibiotics. All of these can be made available in very simple and unsophisticated hospital facilities. It has generally been assumed that the cost of such facilities would be high, and cost effectiveness much…