Despite most indicators attest the good performance of the National health care, a further area to be addressed is the perception of its

quality by the people. The discrepancy between quality of care and its public perception is in fact reported in many industrialized countries. Accreditation programs can improve the availability and access to a standardized quality of care. A well-established worldwide accreditation program is led by Joint Commission International (JCI). As far as accreditation of perinatal care is regarded, in 2010 the U. S. Joint Commission has defined a set of measures known as the perinatal care core measure set, which consider elective delivery, cesarean section, antenatal steroids, healthcare-associated bloodstream infections in newborns, exclusive

Autophagy Compound Library breastmilk feeding. In Italy, the 2011-2013 National Health Care Plan underline the need for developing and implementing certification programs for Hospital Birth Centers. In 2011, a multidisciplinary working group (Italian Group for Safe Birth) has thus been established. Conclusion: the main goal of each Health Care Organization should be to achieve the best quality www.selleckchem.com/HIF.html and safety. Health Care Organizations must reduce random variations and improve activities by a standardized process whose results can be measured both in terms of patients outcome and in terms of transparency of each activity. Newborn and infants are one of the weakest population group; to improve their health outcome is thus mandatory to do all efforts to obtain a safe, effective, efficient and patient-centered health care assistance.”
“The steadily growing epidemic of diabetes mellitus (DM) poses a threat for global tuberculosis (TB) control. Previous studies have identified an important association between DM and TB. However, these studies have limitations: very few were carried out in low-income countries, and none in Africa, raising uncertainty about the strength of the DM-TB association in these settings,

and many critical questions remain unanswered. As a result of these questions and uncertainties, the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease (The Union), the World Diabetes Foundation and selleck chemicals llc the World Health Organization Stop TB Department undertook a SUMMARY series of consultations as of January 2009. A systematic review and meta-analysis was undertaken by the Department of Epidemiology, Harvard School of Public Health between May and August 2009, and a consultation meeting involving the experts who reviewed the report took place at The Union Headquarters in Paris on 6 and 7 November 2009. This paper constitutes a summary report of the findings, the research gaps and prioritised areas of research, and the recommendations from that meeting.