Perceptions of doctors and nurses at a Ugandan hospital regarding the introduction and use of the South African Triage Scale.

Background: International Hospital Kampala (IHK) experienced a challenge with how to standardise the triaging and sorting of patients. There was no triage tool to help to prioritise which patients to attend to first, with very sick patient often being missed.

Aim And Setting: To explore whether the introduction of the South African Triage Scale (SATS) was seen as valuable and sustainable by the IHK's outpatient department and emergency unit (OPD and EU) staff.

High sensitivity and specificity of acid-fast microscopy for diagnosis of pulmonary tuberculosis in an African population with a high prevalence of human immunodeficiency virus.

Laboratories in low-income countries report that acid-fast microscopy is insensitive and nonspecific. We demonstrate that for a Ugandan population with high prevalences of tuberculosis and human immunodeficiency virus infection, acid-fast microscopy is highly sensitive (93.1%) and specific (100%) when performed by trained technologists in a carefully controlled manner using established techniques.