Essay Example. Another Strategy for Addressing the Evaluation Challenge Identified by My Colleague

Another method that can be used to address the identified evaluation challenge is the early and accurate diagnosis of malaria. It has been reported that high accuracy of malarial parasite diagnosis can be accomplished through parasitological confirmation. The World Health Organization (2019) recommends that parasitological confirmation of diagnosis can be done using malaria rapid diagnostic tests or microscopy (Cunningham et al., 2019). This is carried out in all individuals suspected to be infected with malaria before the administration of the treatment. The choice of either of the two methods is based on the presence of highly-skilled technicians, epidemiology of the disease, and the patient case-load (World Health Organization, 2019).

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Parasite-based diagnosis of malaria has been found to lead to improved patient management in individuals with other underlying conditions such as febrile illnesses (World Health Organization, 2019). This is because it helps in the identification of patients without the disease and thus does not require an antimalarial medication but a different treatment. The parasite-based diagnostic technique has also been found to decrease the development and spread of drug resistance by preserving antimalarials for use by patients who have the disease.

Malaria rapid diagnostic tests detect specific proteins released by malaria parasites found in the blood of infected people. This type of test is crucial in determining the prevalence of malaria in a particular population because it is capable of distinguishing between different malaria parasites and can detect both single and multiple species of the parasite in the blood (World Health Organization, 2019). Rapid diagnostic tests are gradually becoming a standard for clinically diagnosing malarial infections and for estimating the prevalence of malaria in the community (Dalrymple et al., 2018; Mwesigwa et al., 2019).

References

Cunningham, J., Jones, S., Gatton, M. L., Barnwell, J. W., Cheng, Q., Chiodini, P. L., Glenn, J., Incardona, S., Kosack, C., Luchavez, J., Menard, D., Nhem, S., Oyibo, W., Rees-Channer, R. R., Gonzalez, I., & Bell, D. (2019). A review of the WHO malaria rapid diagnostic test product testing program (2008-2018): Performance, procurement, and policy. Malaria Journal, 18(1), 387. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12936-019-3028-z

Dalrymple, U., Arambepola, R., Gething, P. W., & Cameron, E. (2018). How long do rapid diagnostic tests remain positive after anti-malarial treatment? Malaria Journal, 17(1), 228. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12936-018-2371-9

Mwesigwa, J., Slater, H., Bradley, J., Saidy, B., Ceesay, F., Whittaker, C., Kandeh, B., Nkwakamna, D., Drakeley, C., Van Geertruyden, J.-P., Bousema, T., Achan, J., & D'Alessandro, U. (2019). Field performance of malaria highly sensitive rapid diagnostic test in a setting of varying malaria transmission. Malaria Journal, 18(1), 288. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12936-019-2929-1

World Health Organization. (2019). WHO | Overview of diagnostic testing. WHO. http://www.who.int/malaria/areas/diagnosis/overview/en/

World Health Organization. (2019). WHO | Rapid diagnostic tests. http://www.who.int/malaria/areas/diagnosis/rapid_diagnostic_tests/en/