GHS develops manual on malaria diagnosis

Daily Graphic, Back Page, Thursday, April 23/09

Story Rebecca Quaicoe-Duho

THE Ghana Health Service (GHS) has developed a manual to guide laboratory technicians in the accurate diagnosis of malaria in the country.
The manual, which was developed in conjunction with the National Malaria Control Programme (NMCP), will help reduce the high cases of malaria reported at various health centres.
The Programme Manager of the NMCP, Dr Constance Bart-Plange, made this known at a media seminar as part of the celebration of this year’s World Malaria Day.
The day, which falls on April 25, 2009, is being celebrated on the theme: “Counting Malaria Out”.
Dr Bart-Plange said the manual would be used in training laboratory technicians and other clinicians to help get the true picture of malaria in the country.
Information at the NMCP indicates that only about 10 per cent of presumptive malaria cases diagnosed at various hospitals and clinics were really malaria.
Other illnesses have the same symptoms as malaria, are most often diagnosed as malaria and are, therefore, treated as such, a situation that she said increased reported cases of malaria.
Dr Bart-Plange said illnesses that had symptoms of fever such as typhoid, HIV and AIDS, pelvic infections, appendicitis, urinary track infection, meningitis and early pregnancy were most often wrongly diagnosed as malaria.
Dr Bart-Plange was of the view that if the incidence of wrong diagnosis was not checked it would lead to a situation where the people could become resistant to the country’s first line drug prescription.
The consequence of such development, she said, would precipitate the introduction of a second line drug, which would not augur well for the country’s health system.
A private medical practitioner, Dr Joseph Somuah Akuamoah, who gave a presentation on the case management of malaria in the country, said a strip to conduct Rapid Diagnostic Tests (RDTs) for accurate recordings of malaria would soon be introduced nationwide to help in the accurate diagnosis of malaria.
The strip, which he said detects plasmodial antigens present in the blood, would be able to establish whether or not a patient was suffering from malaria or other conditions.
In a presentation, Dr Keziah Malm of the NMCP said Ghana was currently at the control stage of eliminating malaria from the country, saying that the country had adopted combined methods such as the use of treated nets, insecticides, coils and repellents to get to the pre-elimination and finally the elimination stages.
According to her, seven per cent of children who survive cerebral malaria were left with permanent neurological problems such as weakness, blindness, speech problems, attention deficits and epilepsy.
A medical entomologist with the NMCP, Dr Aba Baffoe Wilmot, who spoke on ‘Epidemiology of malaria and malaria vector control in Ghana’, said the general Ghanaian population was at risk of malarial attack.
The Country Director of the John Hopkins Centre for Communication Programmes — Voices Project, Mr Emmanuel Fiagbey, called for stronger partnership between the media and malaria professionals to bring issues of malaria to the fore front.