Awareness, Availability, Preference and Usage of malaria rapid diagnostic test among health workers in primary health care facilities in Port Harcourt and Obio/Akpor, Rivers State
Journal Title: INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CURRENT RESEARCH IN MEDICAL SCIENCES - Year 2016, Vol 2, Issue 5
Abstract
A key to the effective management of malaria is prompt and accurate diagnosis, and use of malaria rapid diagnostic tests (mRDTs) is becoming relevant in the absence of reliable microscopy. This was a quantitative and qualitative cross sectional study that investigated the awareness, availability, perception and usage of malaria rapid diagnostic tests among health workers in seventeen primary health care facilities in Obio/Akpor and Port Harcourt, Rivers State.Results were presented as proportions and chi-squared test. Level of significance was set at 0.05 (2 tailed). Mean age of the 203 respondents was 36±0.97 with a minimum of 1 year and a maximum of 35years duration of practice. Generally, the awareness of mRDTs among the health workers was high. Laboratory scientists, Pharmacy technicians and Laboratory technicians were all aware of malaria rapid diagnostic. The most common source of information on mRDT was the Government 112 (62.2%) followed by co- workers 40 (22.2 %). All the seventeen primary health centers had mRDT which were mainly supplied by the Government 155(86.1%) and NGO 3(1.7%). A total of 10(41.7%) Doctors, 38(52.1%) Nurses, 14(56.0%) CHO, 25(55.6%) CHEW, 11(68.8%) Laboratory scientists and 13(92.9%) Laboratory technicians reported been trained on mRDT. Of the 180 (88.7%) health workers that were aware of mRDT, only 143 (79.4%) had actually used mRDT to diagnose malaria. Of which 138 (96.5%) reported that the testing procedure was easy while 100 (69.9%) rated mRDT results to be reliable. Cadre of health workers was found to be statistically significant with usage (P<0.001) in this study. Furthermore, 81(39.9%) of the health worker acknowledge the use of mRDT almost every day while 91 (50.6%) expressed preference for mRDT to other laboratory test methods. Most of the health workers (62 out of 203 or 30.5%) acknowledged the use of mRDT for all fever cases. Confidence in mRDT result was 50% among the health workers while122 (67.8%) reported that patients trust mRDT. Major barriers reported by the Lab scientist in the interview guide was mRDT being unreliable and its inability to detect low parasite load.
Authors and Affiliations
Eze, Chinwe N1* . and Eze, Chinwe N1* . and
Keywords
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