Planning appropriate hospitals for developing countries.

Abstract

Since the most prevalent characteristic of developing countries is the lack of human and financial resources, and that social custom and practice play a more important role in developing countries than in others, the paper discusses how those characteristics influence the planning of hospitals, focusing on the issues that differentiate hospitals in developing countries from those in other parts of the world. Against that background the paper proposes an approach to planning hospitals for incremental development and for subsequent growth and change to ensure that they will remain appropriate to evolving patterns of healthcare and changing circumstances in developing countries.