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External Quality Assessment of Reading and Interpretation of Malaria Rapid Diagnostic Tests among 1849 End-Users in the Democratic Republic of the Congo through Short Message Service (SMS)

BACKGROUND: Although malaria rapid diagnostic tests (RDT) are simple to perform, they remain subject to errors, mainly related to the post-analytical phase. We organized the first large scale SMS based external quality assessment (EQA) on correct reading and interpretation of photographs of a three-...

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Autores principales: Mukadi, Pierre, Gillet, Philippe, Lukuka, Albert, Mbatshi, Joêl, Otshudiema, John, Muyembe, Jean-Jacques, Buyze, Jozefien, Jacobs, Jan, Lejon, Veerle
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2013
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3742745/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23967211
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0071442
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author Mukadi, Pierre
Gillet, Philippe
Lukuka, Albert
Mbatshi, Joêl
Otshudiema, John
Muyembe, Jean-Jacques
Buyze, Jozefien
Jacobs, Jan
Lejon, Veerle
author_facet Mukadi, Pierre
Gillet, Philippe
Lukuka, Albert
Mbatshi, Joêl
Otshudiema, John
Muyembe, Jean-Jacques
Buyze, Jozefien
Jacobs, Jan
Lejon, Veerle
author_sort Mukadi, Pierre
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Although malaria rapid diagnostic tests (RDT) are simple to perform, they remain subject to errors, mainly related to the post-analytical phase. We organized the first large scale SMS based external quality assessment (EQA) on correct reading and interpretation of photographs of a three-band malaria RDT among laboratory health workers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo). METHODS AND FINDINGS: High resolution EQA photographs of 10 RDT results together with a questionnaire were distributed to health facilities in 9 out of 11 provinces in DR Congo. Each laboratory health worker answered the EQA by Short Message Service (SMS). Filled-in questionnaires from each health facility were sent back to Kinshasa. A total of 1849 laboratory health workers in 1014 health facilities participated. Most frequent errors in RDT reading were i) failure to recognize invalid (13.2–32.5% ) or negative test results (9.8–12.8%), (ii) overlooking faint test lines (4.1–31.2%) and (iii) incorrect identification of the malaria species (12.1–17.4%). No uniform strategy for diagnosis of malaria at the health facility was present. Stock outs of RDTs occurred frequently. Half of the health facilities had not received an RDT training. Only two thirds used the RDT recommended by the National Malaria Control Program. Performance of RDT reading was positively associated with training and the technical level of health facility. Facilities with RDT positivity rates >50% and located in Eastern DR Congo performed worse. CONCLUSIONS: Our study confirmed that errors in reading and interpretation of malaria RDTs are widespread and highlighted the problem of stock outs of RDTs. Adequate training of end-users in the application of malaria RDTs associated with regular EQAs is recommended.
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spelling pubmed-37427452013-08-21 External Quality Assessment of Reading and Interpretation of Malaria Rapid Diagnostic Tests among 1849 End-Users in the Democratic Republic of the Congo through Short Message Service (SMS) Mukadi, Pierre Gillet, Philippe Lukuka, Albert Mbatshi, Joêl Otshudiema, John Muyembe, Jean-Jacques Buyze, Jozefien Jacobs, Jan Lejon, Veerle PLoS One Research Article BACKGROUND: Although malaria rapid diagnostic tests (RDT) are simple to perform, they remain subject to errors, mainly related to the post-analytical phase. We organized the first large scale SMS based external quality assessment (EQA) on correct reading and interpretation of photographs of a three-band malaria RDT among laboratory health workers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo). METHODS AND FINDINGS: High resolution EQA photographs of 10 RDT results together with a questionnaire were distributed to health facilities in 9 out of 11 provinces in DR Congo. Each laboratory health worker answered the EQA by Short Message Service (SMS). Filled-in questionnaires from each health facility were sent back to Kinshasa. A total of 1849 laboratory health workers in 1014 health facilities participated. Most frequent errors in RDT reading were i) failure to recognize invalid (13.2–32.5% ) or negative test results (9.8–12.8%), (ii) overlooking faint test lines (4.1–31.2%) and (iii) incorrect identification of the malaria species (12.1–17.4%). No uniform strategy for diagnosis of malaria at the health facility was present. Stock outs of RDTs occurred frequently. Half of the health facilities had not received an RDT training. Only two thirds used the RDT recommended by the National Malaria Control Program. Performance of RDT reading was positively associated with training and the technical level of health facility. Facilities with RDT positivity rates >50% and located in Eastern DR Congo performed worse. CONCLUSIONS: Our study confirmed that errors in reading and interpretation of malaria RDTs are widespread and highlighted the problem of stock outs of RDTs. Adequate training of end-users in the application of malaria RDTs associated with regular EQAs is recommended. Public Library of Science 2013-08-13 /pmc/articles/PMC3742745/ /pubmed/23967211 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0071442 Text en © 2013 Mukadi et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Mukadi, Pierre
Gillet, Philippe
Lukuka, Albert
Mbatshi, Joêl
Otshudiema, John
Muyembe, Jean-Jacques
Buyze, Jozefien
Jacobs, Jan
Lejon, Veerle
External Quality Assessment of Reading and Interpretation of Malaria Rapid Diagnostic Tests among 1849 End-Users in the Democratic Republic of the Congo through Short Message Service (SMS)
title External Quality Assessment of Reading and Interpretation of Malaria Rapid Diagnostic Tests among 1849 End-Users in the Democratic Republic of the Congo through Short Message Service (SMS)
title_full External Quality Assessment of Reading and Interpretation of Malaria Rapid Diagnostic Tests among 1849 End-Users in the Democratic Republic of the Congo through Short Message Service (SMS)
title_fullStr External Quality Assessment of Reading and Interpretation of Malaria Rapid Diagnostic Tests among 1849 End-Users in the Democratic Republic of the Congo through Short Message Service (SMS)
title_full_unstemmed External Quality Assessment of Reading and Interpretation of Malaria Rapid Diagnostic Tests among 1849 End-Users in the Democratic Republic of the Congo through Short Message Service (SMS)
title_short External Quality Assessment of Reading and Interpretation of Malaria Rapid Diagnostic Tests among 1849 End-Users in the Democratic Republic of the Congo through Short Message Service (SMS)
title_sort external quality assessment of reading and interpretation of malaria rapid diagnostic tests among 1849 end-users in the democratic republic of the congo through short message service (sms)
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3742745/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23967211
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0071442
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