Critical Care Units in Malawi : A Cross-Sectional Study

Copyright: © 2023 The Author(s)..

Background: The global burden of critical illness falls disproportionately outside high-income countries. Despite younger patient populations with similar or lower disease severity, critical illness outcomes are poor outside high-income countries. A lack of data limits attempts to understand and address the drivers of critical care outcomes outside high-income countries.

Objectives: We aim to characterize the organization, available resources, and service capacity of public sector critical care units in Malawi and identify barriers to improving care.

Methods: We conducted a secondary analysis of the Malawi Emergency and Critical Care Survey, a cross-sectional study performed from January to February 2020 at all four central hospitals and a simple random sample of nine out of 24 public sector district hospitals in Malawi, a predominantly rural, low-income country of 19.6 million in southern Africa. Data from critical care units were used to characterize resources, processes, and barriers to care.

Findings: There were four HDUs and four ICUs across the 13 hospitals in the Malawi Emergency and Critical Care Survey sample. The median critical care beds per 1,000,000 catchment was 1.4 (IQR: 0.9 to 6.7). Absent equipment was the most common barrier in HDUs (46% [95% CI: 32% to 60%]). Stockouts was the most common barriers in ICUs (48% [CI: 38% to 58%]). ICUs had a median 3.0 (range: 2 to 8) functional ventilators per unit and reported an ability to perform several quality mechanical ventilation interventions.

Conclusions: Although significant gaps exist, Malawian critical care units report the ability to perform several complex clinical processes. Our results highlight regional inequalities in access to care and support the use of process-oriented questions to assess critical care capacity. Future efforts should focus on basic critical care capacity outside of urban areas and quantify the impact of context-specific variables on critical care mortality.

Medienart:

E-Artikel

Erscheinungsjahr:

2023

Erschienen:

2023

Enthalten in:

Zur Gesamtaufnahme - volume:89

Enthalten in:

Annals of global health - 89(2023), 1 vom: 15., Seite 51

Sprache:

Englisch

Beteiligte Personen:

Sonenthal, Paul D [VerfasserIn]
Kasomekera, Noel [VerfasserIn]
Connolly, Emilia [VerfasserIn]
Wroe, Emily B [VerfasserIn]
Katete, Martha [VerfasserIn]
Minyaliwa, Tadala [VerfasserIn]
Marsh, Regan H [VerfasserIn]
Banda-Katha, Grace [VerfasserIn]
Nyirenda, Mulinda [VerfasserIn]
Scott, Kirstin W [VerfasserIn]
Bukhman, Alice [VerfasserIn]
Mukherjee, Joia [VerfasserIn]
Rouhani, Shada A [VerfasserIn]

Links:

Volltext

Themen:

Critical care
Facility assessment
Health systems strengthening
High dependency unit
Intensive care unit
Journal Article
Malawi
Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

Anmerkungen:

Date Completed 08.08.2023

Date Revised 24.08.2023

published: Electronic-eCollection

Citation Status MEDLINE

doi:

10.5334/aogh.4053

funding:

Förderinstitution / Projekttitel:

PPN (Katalog-ID):

NLM360471560